It’s New Year’s Eve. A little nightcap can’t hurt, can it? Steve gets a message from hot lady asking to attend her NYE party. He obliges, but soon finds out that he had made a great mistake.
When a beautiful widow with a dark secret uses Facebook to lure two young men to her gorgeous Hollywood apartment for a New Year’s Eve party, a series of unexpected events take place.
Just One Drink, IMDB
Steve (Andrew de Burgh) has no plans besides getting high with friend Derek (Isaac Anderson). Tamara (Barbara Nedeljakova), a friend of a friend, offers a night of partying to bring in the New Year. But after partaking in a mimosa, they find themselves in a world of hurt when Tamara exacts revenge for the death of her husband Andrei (Harwood Gordon). Just One Drink is the modern tale of “an eye for an eye,” and no one’s idea of vengeance is swift or merciful.
As it turns out, Steve is responsible for Andrei’s death; after finding out that Andrei was one of Stalin’s righthand men during the Cold War and had a hand in killing Steve’s grandfather and leaving his pregnant grandmother to fend for herself, Steve kidnaps and murders him with no remorse. Tamara does the same, drugging Steve (and Derek, who was unfortunate enough to accompany Steve to the “party”) and tying him to a table where she did the same. Just One Drink carries the horror in its title, promising something dangerous to come.
What I liked about Just One Drink was the use of Stalin as the “Big Bad” thing of the past, as opposed to the usual Nazi route. Plus, it made all the more sense that Tamara’s actress is Slovakian, adding just a pinch of European reality to the story. On that same note, the murder scenes show almost nothing — but they don’t really need to. What was likely an attempt to keep production costs down instead turned the work to the audience, as we can just imagine the pain inflicted with boxcutters and an assortment of other sharp objects.
And by the end of Just One Drink, Tamara gathers herself up, gets into the car, and puts on some lipstick, ready to continue the night and enter the New Year on a clean slate. She has put that monstrous past behind her, showing that revenge can indeed be sweet. Just One Drink has inklings of moral messaging, such as wrongs of the past coming up to get you, but it also is a quick revenge story that doesn’t overload you with twisted plot points or excessive violence. After all, how much trouble can one drink really get you in?
Watch Just One Drink now on YouTube. Be sure to follow writer/director Andrew de Burgh on Instagram.
