Loren Cass (2007)

71% of critics liked it
(14 reviews)
23% of users liked it
(143 ratings)

The debut feature by Chris Fuller, the hard-edged drama Loren Cass stars Travis Mynard as Jason, a skinhead who starts a racial conflagration after playing a prank on a Black man with the help of his friend Cale (played by the director and writer, but billed under the name Lewis Borgan). Cale asks… More The debut feature by Chris Fuller, the hard-edged drama Loren Cass stars Travis Mynard as Jason, a skinhead who starts a racial conflagration after playing a prank on a Black man with the help of his friend Cale (played by the director and writer, but billed under the name Lewis Borgan). Cale asks out a young waitress (Kayle Tabish), but they end up having dinner at the diner where she works. Everyone in the film seems weighed down by hopelessness and racial tension. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 23 min.
Directed By: Chris Fuller
Written By: Christopher Fuller
Genres: Musical & Performing Arts, Drama

In Theaters: Aug 25, 2006 Wide
On DVD: Nov 24, 2009
Studio: Kino International

Critic Reviews

Gary Goldstein, Chicago Tribune
It's tedious, dispiriting stuff.
V.A. Musetto, New York Post
The low-budget, low- tech indie Loren Cass is an example of less being best.
Nathan Lee, New York Times
This sharp, gutsy indie is one of the year's great discoveries.
Aaron Hillis, Village Voice
A starkly lyrical portrait of angry, disaffected teens in the racially tense wake of the actual 1996 St. Petersburg, Florida, riots.
Kam Williams, Sly Fox
Angry white males with suicidal tendencies are people, too!
Nick Schager, Lessons of Darkness
An oppressive sense of brutality, loneliness and ennui remains visceral.
Sara Maria Vizcarrondo, Boxoffice Magazine
What begins as an almost sullen and certainly glacial story about wayward teens in St. Petersburg, Florida grows into an eerie meditation-the sort that people, when they've had the distance, look back on with a misplaced feeling of warmth.
Tony Macklin, Las Vegas Weekly
Loren Cass is neither a success nor a failure. It has a young director who is a work in progress.
Edward Havens, FilmJerk.com
We're presented a small slice of life with a group of wasted teens, expected to consider this to be somehow artistic and asked to be sympathetic for their malaise.
Cole Smithey, ColeSmithey.com
"My fiction beats the hell out of my truth." That suggestive line from first-time filmmaker Chris Fuller's dead-end portrait of suburban American dystopia cuts like a knife across the dramatic heart of an original and gutsy drama captured on 16mm film.
Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru
A deceptively simple indie drama that's quite bizarre, raw, haunting and refreshingly original on a visceral level.
Andrew Schenker, Slant Magazine
Fuller leaves plenty of room for the viewer to create his own meaning but, in the end, it's not clear how much meaning the filmmaker has brought to the project himself.
Kam Williams, NewsBlaze
Angry white males with suicidal tendencies are people, too!
Andrew Grant, Time Out New York
In terms of low-budget filmmaking aspiring past its limitations, Loren Cass is the real deal.

Read all 14 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

Greg S

Three alienated teens do nothing much in 1997 in St. Petersburg, Florida; to make up for the dead time, every now and then the screen goes black and they read bad beatnik poetry or play clips of a rabble rousing sermon by a African-American preacher. Also includes tasteless footage… More
Three alienated teens do nothing much in 1997 in St. Petersburg, Florida; to make up for the dead time, every now and then the screen goes black and they read bad beatnik poetry or play clips of a rabble rousing sermon by a African-American preacher. Also includes tasteless footage of the real life suicide of Pennsylvania treasurer Bud Dwyer for no good reason. Dull and pretentious; the viewer will find it easy to understand why anyone trapped inside this movie would want to commit suicide.
Walter M

"Loren Cass" is a fine example of minimalist filmmaking, relying less on story, than on a particular time and place which in this case is St. Petersburg, Florida in 1997. With the parents either being catatonic or blithely ignorant, it is no surprise at the level of teen… More
"Loren Cass" is a fine example of minimalist filmmaking, relying less on story, than on a particular time and place which in this case is St. Petersburg, Florida in 1997. With the parents either being catatonic or blithely ignorant, it is no surprise at the level of teen alienation which is exacerbated by the lack of communication, expressed in the low amount of dialogue. At least Cale(Chris Fuller, who also wrote and directed), Jason(Travis Maynard) and Nicole(Kayla Tabish) are waking up to their potential. Cale does not even go home, sleeping on the floor at the auto shop where he works. His friend Jason waits in the middle of the street for him to get off work.(Jason has dreams of his own death.) The two friends hang out, get into fights and are interviewed by the police. That cycle is broken up when Cale meets Nicole, who waits tables and has frequent anonymous sexual hookups.