Searching for new release VOD (video on demand) horror movies would typically turn up sub-Asylum knock-offs of major franchises, bad riffs on Syfy original movies like Sharknado or Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf , and wretched but earnest found footage wastes. But this week’s VOD of the Dead turned up something else entirely: the deadly serious festival film billed as Latvia’s first-ever horror movie, The Man in the Orange Jacket .

‘The Man In The Orange Jacket’ Trailer

An expression of working class rage, The Man in the Orange Jacket gets off to an interesting start. The titular jacketed Man— credited as Dan on IMDB —is a laid off construction worker. His anger, as he stomps around an austere logging site, is palpable. The Man in the Orange Jacket creates a quick and effective visual shorthand, contrasting stately and expertly composed wide shots with the subjective, shaky, stomping anger burning up our killer from the inside.

After stalking and killing the man responsible for the layoffs, Dan sticks around in his mansion and adopts the upper class lifestyle for himself. This is where The Man in the Orange Jacket should soar.

Will Dan adopt upper class pretensions and find himself no better than the corporate overlord who ruined his life?

Or will The Man in the Orange Jacket devolve into an interminable slog down vague Is-This-Real-Or-Just-Psychosis dead-ends? Yes. This.

Though appearing in a venue typically reserved for b-horror trash, The Man in the Orange Jacket hedges its bets a bit, with a distinctively arthouse vibe. This is largely an illusion. As the killer stalks a woman around her huge mansion, it slowly dawns on us that the long shots are less contributing to a Haneke-ian sense of place or growing dread, but are actually due to a complete misunderstanding about how tension builds in a horror sequence. The psychological elements have the same tendency to straddle the line between pretension and incompetence.

But what about the VOD horror fan just looking for kicks? Violence in The Man in the Orange Jacket rises above much of VOD horror, which tends to augment tableaus of dead bodies (which can be easily staged) with the occasional CG blood spray.

The Man in the Orange Jacket does both, but with more verve than most.

A particularly harrowing scene involves a spike driven into the back of a woman’s head with a mallet. The sequence won’t shock experienced horror viewers, but the way in which the movie abandons its original themes to indulge lengthy sequences of violence against women is likely to make some viewers uncomfortable.

Still, tearing into women for vague, sadistic and salacious reasons has been a common trope in horror movies for decades. In this The Man in the Orange Jacket feels more derivative than despicable. More damning is the abandonment of the class warfare conflict that initially animates The Man in the Orange Jacket for a typical “let’s do something monstrous to a prostitute” horror beat.

As a VOD rental The Man in the Orange Jacket feels a long way from worthwhile. It’s too ponderous and pretentious to be fun or pulpy and too incompetent to satisfy as horror.