A young man, Billy (Hunger Games star Josh Hutcherson), enters as a customer but reveals himself as an armed robber. Melinda attempts to run off with Billy, but he is not interested. He gets into a heated argument with Sheila. From there, matters go downhill for all three characters, and only one survives.
How others will see it. Burn is the only feature film of Mike Gan, who directed the independent movie and is credited as sole screenwriter. It is his final film credit, and one has to wonder what he is doing now.
At imdb.com, Burn has a reasonable 7600 user votes, and can presently be streamed via Amazon Prime. It did manage to squeeze out a couple of festival award nominations, but has a low user rating of 5.7 out of 10. The user reviews are all over the map, but my guess is that the reason for the low user rating is that viewers don't like where the plot goes.
My guess is that viewers would have liked it better if Melinda ran off with Billy, similar to Badlands (1973). Instead, Sheila is killed early, and Melinda goes off the rails. She ties up Billy and interviews him. She buries Sheila, pours gasoline all over the store, and plans to set it on fire. The crazy plot twists appear to be too much for most viewers, although on the whole they don't believe it is a terrible film, merely average.
How I felt about it. The enigmatic Burn is best regarded as a character study. The desperately lonely Melinda tries to attach herself to men she hardly knows, even if they are as dubious as store robber Billy. Billy tries to talk his way out of his difficulties, but he is exasperated at every turn by the eccentric Melinda.
The sudden transformation of Melinda from kindly wallflower into a psychopath is too jarring for most viewers. And it doesn't seem likely. The logical action regarding Billy would be to give him the money, then call the police once he is gone. After Billy turns violent, the logical thing to do is flee the store, and contact police. Once Billy is bound, again, Melinda should contact the police, and have them deal with Billy.
Melinda doesn't do any of these things, because she still has some hopes of running off with Billy. She then realizes Billy is lying to her, and her plan won't succeed. This is when she sexually assaults the defenseless Billy, whom she is attracted to despite his criminal behavior.
So, she doesn't kill Billy, or free him, or turn him in, because she doesn't want to lose him. The only way she can have him is as a captive, reminiscent of Misery (1990). But her situation is untenable, which only increases her desperation.