Set in the early 2000s, Arthur Sailes (Sam Mraovich) badly wants to marry his boyfriend, Ben Sheets (Jamie Gabel). Unfortunately for them, they not only have to deal with gay marriage still being illegal in their home state, but they also need to deal with harsh pushback from their families. Will Ben and Arthur succeed in getting married? Can their relationship survive the ordeal? Will they get their happily ever after in the face of prejudice? 

Yes, no, and fuck no.

The idea of a film on overcoming prejudice and making your dreams come true is nothing new. But, for the time, a film about gay men wanting to overcome prejudice was controversial and guaranteed to be banned or quashed. But, dammit, director Sam Mraovich needed this story to be told! And boy, did he tell a story.

Mraovich’s main motivation for completing this movie, despite the delays and his lack of experience, was the fact that the LGBTQ+ community wasn’t afforded the same rights as other people in America, and he wanted to make his outrage known; a good reason to press on, in my opinion. But, Mraovich’s lack of experience in writing, directing, or acting is on full display with this movie.  The rest of the cast, even those with acting experience, either sound bored or are constantly screaming. The production was done on the cheap, with grainy footage, poorly timed edits, and peaking mic volume. All these issues combined are why this movie gets called the gay version of The Room.

Now, I initially was making this post as a “Good in Concept, Flawed in Execution” review. But, as I watched the movie again, I really wanted to focus on the ending. The finale in particular is an unfortunate case because it, in concept, could make for a sad, but interesting, ending. Instead, it just succeeded in making people uncomfortable. 

By this point, Victor, Arthur’s religious zealot brother, succeeds in shooting Ben dead in his home. Arthur, who was in the middle of a shower, hears the commotion and runs out to cradle Ben’s body and cry dramatically. For some reason, Victor decides that he can’t really commit to killing his own brother, despite already murdering people prior to Ben. Victor opts to “baptize” Arthur in the bathtub by stripping him completely naked and holding him under until he stops moving around so much. Victor then goes into the living room to think about his actions. Arthur gets up, grabs only an open shirt and briefs to wear, then goes to get Ben’s gun from the dresser. When Victor notices that Arthur is up and armed, he doesn’t immediately shoot Arthur with the gun that was several inches away from him. Then, Arthur begins propositioning/begging/demanding that Victor have sex with him at gunpoint. After a lot of back and forth, Victor finally shoots Arthur. Arthur, mortally wounded, uses the last of his strength to shoot Victor and kill him. And the movie just…stops.

The first time I watched this was with friends. When we got to the ending, we all kept looking at each other with expressions of “What the fuck is happening? I kinda want to stop watching, but we’re only a few minutes from the credits!”

Now, by this point in the movie, both Arthur and Victor have completely snapped. Everything they cared about has been taken away from them in the worst ways. Victor has been ex-communicated from the church because the congregation doesn’t want someone with a gay relative there. Arthur has been dealing with money and legal troubles, Ben randomly becoming physically abusive, and couldn’t stop Ben from being killed. The brothers are both so desperate to either “make things right” or get revenge that they are super on board with murdering people. Shit, both of them already have a body count of at least 1 by the end of the movie.

It makes sense that they would behave in completely unhinged ways before offing each other. And, ultimately, the conclusion, where everyone is dead, puts the point home that hate and violence begets hate and violence, and everyone would likely still be alive if they had just left the other side alone. But, all of that is overshadowed by Arthur stalking towards Victor, demanding to be fucked while wildly shooting at him. (Or as wildly as Sam Mraovich’s underacting will allow.)

Apparently, this is a ripoff homage to Scarface, where Tony Montana’s sister, Gina, does the same thing after watching Tony murder his friend/her newlywed husband, Manny. I wasn’t aware of the connection, since I hadn’t watched Scarface. The scene is just as uncomfortable in the source as it is in Ben and Arthur, but…it made sense why it unfolded the way it did. 

Tony was always overprotective of Gina, especially since she was his only family after being basically disowned by his mother. But, Tony also had a borderline incestuous view of Gina, getting violent with her when he sees her going into a bathroom with a guy, and yelling at Manny not to touch her. In the scene where he shoots Manny, he was high as shit on coke and paranoid that Manny was just trying to give Gina the hump-and-dump. Gina was already at a pretty low point after seeing what her brother had become. She completely snapped after her brother murdered the only man she loved in front of her and, in her mind, confirmed that he wanted her all to himself. So, in her mind, that meant she needed to avenge Manny, while also taunting Tony by demanding he fuck her. 

This set of events doesn’t make sense for Ben and Arthur. Why is Arthur demanding to get railed by his brother? There is no reason for him to be saying or wanting such things. I get that he’s snapped and grieving his newlywed husband. He’s probably still a bit woozy from the chloroform from earlier, too. But, it was never explicitly shown that Victor or Arthur had those thoughts about each other. Arthur clearly despises Victor, mocking and insulting him every chance he gets.

Why is Victor’s response to the sexual threats not immediate refusal or fear, but “This is wrong, but I’m actually going to consider doing it” levels of flustered that last until the last 20 seconds of his life? According to the director, Victor is a closeted man, and deeply ashamed of himself, so he buries his true feelings under murderous homophobia. This isn’t really shown in the movie, but his clothes and his excuses for why he doesn’t have a wife and kids yet is a hint. But, even with that tidbit, why is Victor having “weird and confusing feelings” about not only his brother, but someone who is ACTIVELY THREATENING HIM WITH A GUN? This kind of perpetuates the negative stereotype that gay guys will fuck anything as long as it’s male. 

The only possible hint that Victor would be jealous or overprotective like Tony Montana is that Victor apparently killed a friend of Arthur’s when they were all still kids, because he assumed that the kid was gay. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Victor was jealous of someone else being close to Arthur. It just reaffirms that Victor was a violent homophobe. Besides, Victor and Arthur had been estranged for seven years prior to the start of the movie. If Victor was romantically interested in his brother, he would stay in contact.

Victor also took way too long to neutralize the threat in front of him. His gun was less than a foot away from him, and Arthur was standing clear on the other side of the house, slowly walking towards him. In Scarface, Tony also doesn’t react nearly fast enough when Gina first enters his office, but she doesn’t have the gun out yet. Her robe was open and showing Tony plenty of sideboob, and it looks like he is either wondering if he is hallucinating or is eating the eye candy. She took several seconds to pull out a gun and start shooting, and Tony doesn’t have a gun in immediate reach, so his lack of action is understandable. But Victor actually stops reaching for the gun when Arthur says so, then doesn’t reach for it at all for nearly two minutes. Bear in mind, Victor has killed three people by this point in the movie. Nothing should be stopping him now, especially since Arthur is an active threat.

This last gripe is not so much confusing, but I think is a reasonable thing to complain about. Why is Ben’s murder not even addressed after he gets shot? Once the forced baptism scene starts, all the focus goes to Victor and Arthur’s last conflict, which…yes, that’s understandable. They’re both still alive and the main protagonist is Arthur, despite getting second billing in the title. But, Ben is barely mentioned and isn’t even SEEN after that point. He’s just lying on the floor at one point, then he just…evaporates from the movie, with Arthur not mentioning he was sad about Ben dying. People and plot points tend to come and go a lot in this movie. But that shouldn’t apply to one of the fucking lead characters.

I commend Sam Mraovich for not only rising to the challenge of making a feature-length movie, but completing the project and being a good sport about the criticism. But, hot diggity, is this movie bad! I kinda glossed over what was happening in the rest of the movie, because the ending in particular really confused me. I get that it was all a big Scarface reference, but you can’t just do what someone else did in a better received movie and think it will make your movie better. It would have benefitted Mraovich to have a second opinion on the story, tweaking the ending so that it would make more sense in context. But, we are instead left with a deeply uncomfortable ending to what was a bad, but fun movie.