Written/Directed by Greg Sestero 
Starring: Greg Sestero, Angela Mariano and Rick Edwards 
Run time: 90 minutes 
MPAA Rating: Unrated, recommended for mature audiences 
Hopefully coming soon to a theater near you/VOD 

by Billy Russell, Staff Writer

Miracle Valley got me thinking. It got me thinking about the funny nature of filmmaking, this fickle beast. Making a good movie is hard. You can do everything right, but there are so many factors, so many things dependent on having a budget, that making something with tight purse strings is very difficult to even complete. Making something good is even harder yet. 

Greg Sestero, who stars in, wrote and directed Miracle Valley has had lots of experience with low-budget cinema. He’s had both highs and lows, sometimes even in the same picture, particularly with The Room, which is famously so bad that it’s good--or, perhaps transcends “so bad that it’s good” and flirts with greatness. The Room is surely the Citizen Kane of trash cinema. 

What a lot of people don’t realize is that trash cinema, that fails so spectacularly that it winds up being accidentally good, requires heart. It needs sincerity. It needs to want to say something meaningful. It’s no good if the bad elements are on purpose. The Room, although an awfully-made movie, has thoughts, opinions and heart. That’s the true secret of its success. Tommy Wiseau has learned all the wrong lessons from The Room and has tried to mimic the badness, to insufferable results. His post-Room stuff is practically unwatchable. 

Meanwhile, Greg Sestero has seemed to learn all the right lessons. Granted, he wasn’t the writer or director on The Room, he was one of the lead actors. But he still seemed to take note of what worked and what didn’t--not in a clinical sense, but in what the audience wants. On his first outing as writer and director, Greg Sestero seems to be a natural at making a crowd-pleasing popcorn flick. It ain’t Shakespeare, but it never wanted to be. It’s working class cinema at its most accessible. 

Sestero plays David, a photographer who has a hot tip to photograph an ultra-rare bird that could lead to a big payday. Along for the ride is girlfriend Sarah (Angela Mariano). They’re on the verge of breakup and this trip is not what either of them needs right now. She’s emotionally detached, focusing on her dying mother. And David seems to just want out of this relationship as soon as possible. 

They cross paths with Father Jake (the electric Rick Edwards), the leader of a local “church”. He espouses words of love and togetherness, he manipulates Sarah into his circle, and then uses violence to anyone who stands in his way. 

The plot is extremely loose. Like many movies that focus more on spectacle than on story, the plot itself is something to hang ideas and scenes onto. There are non sequiturs galore in

Miracle Valley. Moments of humor, of horror, of extreme violence, of out-of-nowhere girl power. Incongruity and tonal whiplash is only a problem if it’s not a part of your film’s overall design. When you tell your audience, from the get-go, I’m going to do whatever the hell I want, just hang on, you go along for the ride. 

Sestero makes great use of the Arizona locations. He uses a local famous steakhouse shaped like a cow’s skull as the headquarters for the evil cult. During the audience Q&A, he describes how lucky he got with many of the locations, with business owners complying excitedly to long shooting hours because, let’s face it, everyone loves movies. Arizona is a great place to shoot movies--it was once a thriving industry during the golden era of the western, which has died out decades ago, but that enchantment with the silver screen remains. 

Miracle Valley isn’t perfect, it’s not destined to become some sort of cult classic, but it’s incredibly watchable. It’s never boring. From beginning to end, it’s entertaining. Rick Edwards, as the film’s villain, is a stroke of manic luck. He’s incredible. Many of the performances from the smaller characters are quite good. Sestero lucked out with a small cast of actors who love to chew the scenery. 

What makes a movie like Miracle Valley work as well as it does it that the love for filmmaking is clearly evident. It looks great, with very good cinematography from Matthew Halla who successfully captures the look and feel of 1970s horror like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Sestero wasn’t interested in capturing lightning in a bottle twice by making Miracle Valley a camp-fest like The Room, but he wanted the audience to laugh and cheer in the same way. I think if he continues this trajectory, he has the ability to make something really special.