Too many good actors in this for such a mediocre script. Actors made the best of what they had to work with and I presume they all wanted to try something different. Mike Epps shows some range which adds to his resume but for the life of me, I don't know why Sanaa Latham and Anthony Mackie took the roles....guess it must have been a slow year and pay was too hard to turn down, lol.Average suspense and unpredictable ending makes it a 5 of 10. Definitely no horror (as advertised)or much Thrill but quality acting saved it from lower ratings.

Now I went in knowing that it had a 4.7/10 average (at the moment) which does indeed sound low, but with general urban movies with a predominantly black cast a low rating is not out of the ordinary.I mean despite it's flaws, I did enjoy for instance THE CONFIDANT (2010) which has some similarities to this, and was also a Codeblack Entertainment movie, so I was thinking that this could still be good.I'm fans of most of the cast... Forest Whitaker especially who is one of my big time favourites.But, neither of them can save this poorly written psychological thriller (without much logic).Riddled with plot holes and not a single likable character in sight that seemingly get less likable by the minute it quickly becomes a dull watch.I'm all for African American movies in diverse settings and genres but this is a really poor attempt of a movie and it makes NO GOOD DEED (2014) look like a masterpiece in comparison.Yeah a very disappointing effort indeed.

And by this I'm not only talking about the budget (which seems to be a big concern for another reviewer), but also about the story of the movie. Sometimes there is more to a story than the first glimpse reveals. It may feel like the movie tries to cheat its way into the viewers mind a little bit, but the actors make up for it.This is still a tough watch, because the title is chosen for a reason. There is not always reason to things happening in the movie and it seems a bit like a muddle from time to time, but it's still able to hold up a certain degree of suspense, if you let it to. The actors try their best to divert from some holes in the script (or finished movie, if scenes got deleted for pacing reasons) and the movie will be explicit in depicting violence to a degree.

"Repentance" starts off as a reasonably sincere tale of a best-selling author/life coach (Anthony Mackie) who tries to help a grieving man (Forest Whitaker) come to turns with the death of his mother. But at the 35-minute mark, the movie suddenly jumps the tracks, turning into a bizarre, yet strangely conventional, hostage drama, with the psychologically disturbed client kidnapping and torturing the psychologist in an effort to prove which of the two is actually most in need of help.The movie seems to be making the case that people like the Mackie character are just glib, overpaid shysters, taking advantage of people's suffering by offering them little but shibboleths and bromides to help them cope with their problems - but any message the movie might be trying to convey is subsumed by the unpleasant melodramatics that come to dominate the second half. Yeomen that they are, Mackie and Whitaker work valiantly to overcome the various roadblocks that the script throws in their path, but even these two fine performers eventually have to concede that they're fighting a losing battle here. Even the "surprise" ending and moralistic message can't ultimately redeem this cinematic turkey.