Murder in Miami is a suspense thriller about a photographer who becomes the primary suspect in the serial murders of models who all had a connection to him. It opens up with one of these models just getting back into her apartment and listening to a message from her mother about Christmas plans. She calls her mother back and lets her know that she’s just been busy and that she’s ok but she’s completely unaware that she’s being watched by a masked intruder who is waiting for the right moment. And as soon as she finishes her call and starts to unwind the intruder strikes, and after viciously beating and disfiguring her, throws her off the balcony. Since this appeared to be a crime of passion the police focus on James, the photographer who appeared to have a personal connection with her. He seems shocked to learn that she was killed last night when he tells the police he didn’t have sex with her. But with him being the last person to have been with her, and the extreme prejudice in which she was killed, could James have been responsible for it or is someone close to him trying to frame him?

Not all budgets are created equal. I understand that fact clearly and I always take that into consideration when it comes to Indie films and reviewing them. So I’m definitely more lenient when it comes to special effects and locales than I would with a big budget summer release. There are other things such as acting, the script, and the ambiance, for example, that can turn even an Indie film into a masterpiece. So I was enjoying this opening scene and the tone being established but the music kicked in and it was supposed to be campy but it felt sudden and distracted from the scene by being overly dramatic. The first attack was vicious and clearly there was a hatred involved in the attack and this was a really good setup in partially establishing the mindset of the killer. So it was understandable that the detectives would focus on James initially and so the intriguing premise was made clear. Unfortunately the premise was more intriguing than the execution, and it wasn’t completely due to the way the story unfolded because a decent job was done in maintaining the suspense of who the actual killer was but to the acting at times, which left a lot to be desired. An attempt was made to pull the viewer into the world of photography and modeling from James’s perspective, and this was done by showing his personal life and his interactions with the models during shoots.

James had a sugar momma, Lana Sinclair, who was also responsible for helping him become a big photographer after meeting through a mutual friend. Their relationship was open and complicated and so this as well as Lana’s actions became suspicious in light of the murders. There’s also James’s best friend, Dave, who had been trying to make it big as a photographer and was responsible for Lana and James meeting. However none of these relationships resonated with me as the script was somewhat stiff or delivered stiffly too often and so I couldn’t really get into the connections they were supposed to have. Individually they all were shown to have motives that would make them suspicious from the jealous sugar momma to the envious friend and others who were introduced. And even James came across as the potential killer when his previous use of drugs was mentioned and one reason he stopped was because he couldn’t remember the things he did while on them. Visually the movie worked better on a few occasions such as the use of silhouettes to give a different feeling to a scene, the expressions at times, and the murder scenes kept things intriguing. And as the story unfolded it got deeper into the suspense and everything wasn’t as it seemed as there was eventually more to every character than what was initially let on. This worked in some ways but in other ways it made the story unnecessarily complicated by distracting from the main storyline in ways and I won’t give away any spoilers by referring to certain character developments.

But there wasn’t one situation the characters were in where I believed they were in that moment, and that’s including life-threatening situations, and the stiff acting was even more apparent later in the movie where it felt they were reading from a script without even memorizing the lines. And that was unfortunate because I enjoyed the premise and wanted to enjoy watching the events unfold and the revelations at the end, which felt very rushed.   SUMMARY Murder in Miami is a movie I really wanted to enjoy but the execution was lacking in many ways and mainly the acting. Each character had potential motives to be the killer but some of those motives were completely abandoned or became part of another story line that while slightly intriguing ultimately felt unnecessary. And again, that could’ve been do to the acting because despite some interesting situations the story was never gripping despite my desire to be pulled in. And as a result I never felt invested in the final revelations nor who was left standing, and the irony at the end also contributed to that.