Miss Meadows
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''Miss Meadows'' is a 2014 American
dark comedy Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally ...
thriller film Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. ...
written and directed by Karen Leigh Hopkins. The film stars
Katie Holmes Kate Noelle Holmes (born December 18, 1978) is an American actress. She first achieved fame as Joey Potter on the television series ''Dawson's Creek'' (1998–2003). Holmes made her film debut with a supporting role in Ang Lee's '' The Ice Sto ...
, James Badge Dale, Callan Mulvey and Stephen Bishop. The film was released on November 14, 2014, by Entertainment One Films.


Plot

Miss Mary Meadows is a young woman who works as a substitute first-grade elementary school teacher. She enjoys taking long walks in her suburban neighborhood, wearing traditional clothing and tap-dancing shoes. She drives a 1956 Nash Metropolitan ("It reminds me of an old pair of saddle shoes I once had"). Unknown to everyone, she is a secret vigilante who kills local thugs who accost her or when she witnesses them committing crimes. She always carries a small semi-automatic pistol in her purse and speaks in a childlike, innocent manner. She lives by herself in a small house and talks occasionally with her mother over the telephone about what she did during the day. Investigating the vigilante killings is a local sheriff.The Sheriff is never named, and billed simply as "Sheriff". He soon meets and develops an attraction to her due to her old-fashioned clothing and style of speech. When he begins to suspect Miss Meadows may be the vigilante he is looking for, he is torn between whether to arrest or protect her. When Miss Meadows meets an ex-convict named Skylar, who she learns served time for molesting young children, she begins to fear for her young students' safety. When Miss Meadows approaches and threatens to kill Skylar if he continues hanging around the school or her kids, he begins stalking her. It is eventually revealed that all of the telephone conversations that Miss Meadows has been having with her mother over the course of the film are imaginary. As a young girl, Mary Meadows witnessed her mother's murder in a drive-by shooting outside a local church after attending the wedding of a family friend. This traumatic incident left Miss Meadows so emotionally scarred that she entered a fantasy world in which she imagined that her mother was still alive, then began to go after and kill criminals whom she viewed as a threat to society. The various criminals that Miss Meadows kills on-screen include a trucker who tries to abduct her at gunpoint in the opening scene, a young man who committed a mass shooting at a local diner, and the town's Catholic priest whom Miss Meadows finds sexually molesting a young boy. When Miss Meadows learns that she is pregnant after a sexual encounter with the Sheriff, she decides to accept his proposal of marriage. On the day of the wedding, Skylar kidnaps Heather, one of Miss Meadows's students forcing Miss Meadows to go to Skylar's house (wearing her wedding dress) to try to stop him. She manages to free Heather, but becomes a captive herself. Heather escapes and attracts the attention of the Sheriff who is passing by after leaving the church and enters Skylar's house. Inside the house Skylar finds Miss Meadows' gun in her purse and threatens her with it, but is saved by the Sheriff who shoots him. Seeing Miss Meadows' gun still clutched in Skylar's hand, he notes "It has his prints now". He and Miss Meadows proceed back to the church. A year later, Miss Meadows and the Sheriff are married; she still wears her tap shoes and he has taken up the
accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German language, German ', from '—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a Reed (mou ...
. Now parents to a baby daughter, they are content to be peculiar together. As Miss Meadows prepares to go out before dinner, the Sheriff tells her "Be careful"; she replies "I always am", leaves the house, and does another little tap dance on the sidewalk.


Cast


Production

Principal photography Principal photography is the phase of producing a film or television show in which the bulk of shooting takes place, as distinct from the phases of pre-production and post-production. Personnel Besides the main film personnel, such as the ...
and production began on August 6, 2013, in
Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–United States border, Canada–U.S. maritime border ...
. The Metropolitan in the movie, referred to as a 1956, was actually a Series IV (production started 1959).


Release

The film premiered at the
Tribeca Film Festival The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by Tribeca Enterprises. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive programming. The festival ...
on April 21, 2014. The film was released on November 14, 2014, by Entertainment One Films.


Reception

''Miss Meadows'' received negative reviews from critics. On
Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
, the film has a rating of 43 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


References


External links

* {{IMDb title 2014 films 2014 thriller films 2010s American films 2010s English-language films 2010s vigilante films American thriller films American vigilante films English-language thriller films Lionsgate Canada films Films about educators Films scored by Jeff Cardoni Films shot in Cleveland