Ben Burghart and Jacob Burghart’s “Head Count” has enough wit, smart thriller problem solving and action to make one pass along a hearty “Let’s keep an eye out for what they do next.”

The movie, an expansion of a short they did about a chain gang and a guy who makes his getaway when a beast starts pulling inmates chained together into the brush for devouring, one by one, is pretty much all over the place after that, recreated for the opening here.

It’s a lighthearted dark-underbelly thriller that wastes screen minutes jumping back and forth in time, feeding sometimes superfluous backstory, all the while under-explained scenes, random “gags” and oddly-motivated actions by our hero and others are carried out with a vengeance and often deadly consequences. It’s cluttered and confusing for a movie only a lean 80 minutes long.

But the Burgharts lucked out with their star. Aaron Jakubenko (“TV’s “Tidelands” and “Roman Empire”) would carry this ungainly beast if it could be carried. Charismatic, with a light touch, we can believe he’s done something to put him on a chain gang just as we can believe he’d be the one his ex never gets over.

Cat’s on the world’s only after-dark rural roadside chain gang (!?) when a beast growls, the shocked sheriff and almost-an-idiot deputy (Ryan Kwanten) can’t stop it and Cat ends up stealing a police cruiser and making his get-away into the empty Kansas night.

He’s got a brother (Kyle Dyck) who might help him make his ill-planned getaway, “Saskatoon, Yellow Knife, Alaska, Russia, Santa’s Workshop.” But first he needs to hit the Stockyard, as Jo (Melanie Zanetti) is sure to be there honky tonking. We can guess who she was to him.

But before THAT, the movie has Cat break into the house of a relative for a bath, change of clothes and what not, only to have a couple show up who are NOT related, only to have that couple not be THE married couple you’d expect to find there, the ones who bought the house, but a wife’s nooner interrupted by the angry, big and cuckolded husband.

Bonus points for having the convict trapped under the bed long enough for strangers’ sexual congress to begin over his head, and then joined under the bed by the frantic and dismayed cuckolder, who may wonder how many side pieces this woman has?

The narrative jumps back and forth from a gun-to-his-head moment of truth for Cat, an end result that the picture clumsily takes us to, but not without a clever bit of foreshadowing and a few just random instances of weirdness.

That humiliated deputy is bound to track him down. So are others. But who’s holding the gun?

That opening chain-yank sets us up for a creature feature. That house Cat findself trapped under the bed in has this ultra creepy child-being-punished-staring-into-a-corner statue, another hint of horror.

It’s just a joke, kids.

But all those things considered, and for all of Jakubenko’s roguish screen presence, “Head Count” is decidedly less than the sum of its parts.

Rating: unrated, lots of violence

Cast: Aaron Jakubenko, Melanie Zanetti, Kyle Dyck, Chris Bylsma and Ryan Kwanten.

Credits: Directed by Ben Burghart and Jacob Burghart, scripted by
Ben Burghart, Jacob Burghart and Josh Doke. A Shout! Factory release.

Running time: 1:21