One of the big titles at this year’s Popcorn Frights Film Festival is the world premiere of Sorry, Charlie, a home invasion/defense revenge thriller film by director Colton Tran. Charlotte, aka Charlie, (Kathleen Kenny) is a survivor of a serial rapist & murderer, now pregnant with her assailant’s child. She volunteers on a mental health crisis hotline while maintaining that the person imprisoned for her attack isn’t the guilty man. “The Gentleman,” as he’s referred to in the press, is still out there, and Charlie can’t move on until he’s caught or killed.

The film starts off with the rapist’s method: he lures women out of their home with the sound of a crying baby. The opening title card lays out that psychologically women are far more primed than men to react to this (due to their “sympaphy”, an unfortunate typo in the film). Whether or not that’s true is beside the point, it works pretty well as a central conceit, and it’s based on a supposedly real world event.

As the movie goes on, we of course realize that Charlie is correct. The sounds of babies crying she thinks she’s been hearing are of course the attacker returning to finish the job. But Charlie may have a few tricks up her sleeve during the inevitable showdown in the final act.

You can’t say a lot about the film without noting the lead performance from Kathleen Kenny who holds the whole film together. She’s in practically every shot, and the film doesn’t work without her. Fortunately, she’s more than up to the task, blending both strength and vulnerability. She’s better than the material in fact which is nothing you haven’t seen before, but it’s a lean 75-minute pressure buildup. You’ve definitely seen every beat before, but this low budget film punches above its weight class, resulting in an enjoyable and handsomely-shot chiller. Colton Tran is clearly a director worth keeping an eye on. His scenes are well constructed, the pacing never lags, and he keeps the camera floating menacingly, to great effect. The ending is an effectively nasty little piece of work, even if much of what comes before feels a bit closer to a Lifetime woman-in-peril movie. It’s certainly worth a watch once it shows up on streaming or if you’re lucky to catch it on the big screen.