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If you’re desperate for a cinematic experience just for the sake of feeling something in these dreary times, you could do a lot worse than Derrick Borte’s tentative venture into suspenseful psychological thrills. Be advised however – it is a slightly jarring experience.
It has been a hot minute since we’ve all sat in a cinema theatre and felt that fear and pathos for a character at the mercy of a seemingly limitless evil. Thus, being faced with Russell Crowe as a menacing psychopath – hell bent on teaching our heroine Rachel (Catherine Pistorius) a lesson that comes in the form of a murderous rampage, certainly gets those big screen juices flowing. The central presence of a child character (delivered promisingly by Gabriel Bateman) adds nicely to that emotional terror. This feeling has the power to grip the viewer by the throat at times in the wake of the sheer horrors the villain is willing to inflict. We get some engrossing violence, genuine suspense as to whether safety will be found, and a niggling tease in that part of our brains that wonders what we would do if we were faced with such genuine danger. The frantic but controlled cinematography, suffocating aural sensations of character breathing and close ups of make-up, sweat and tears are all worth a positive mention in that regard.
That said, there are plenty of clichés, cheap effects and predictable turns which will have even the least pretentious of cinema goers scoffing and sinking back into their seats. This is a substantial hindrance to the film’s attempts at immersion. For starters, our protagonist, despite a strong performance from Pistorius, is the victim of some dreadfully predictable writing. She sleeps past her alarms on the couch, a book folded on her coffee table, the title reading How to Help a Child Going through Divorce in block capitals. Later, we hear casual lines from her nebulous “clients” for whom she is late, saying things like “you haven’t been the same since you lost your salon.” These elements make you wince a little with their lack of subtlety. The characterisation of the villain is no better. The opening shot of a shaking bearded man, taking pills, removing a wedding ring and gleaming a hammer puts one in mind of a Cinema Sins cliché count. We get a very standard messy household including a brother living rent-free with his girlfriend in Rachel’s house, with the news cycle gently reporting about a killer on the loose. It’s enough to get one lamenting the amount of money put into the creation of something more familiar than a formula in your school log tables. This is further worsened by musical crescendos trying to jump you when a car crashes, and the loud clicking you hear every time one of Chekhov’s many guns are locked and loaded in the first twenty minutes. Later on, each road race is accompanied by a score which is as generic as a Microsoft office template. Full viewer immersion is thus all but impossible
What is more difficult to swallow than anything else is the movie’s efforts to take a thematic look at anger and rage in America. We’re given a little introduction to news coverage surrounding American rage, the odd statistic about road rage in the United States and treated to passing comments of the everyday people about how people getting angry in the streets is common and you really have to be careful. This is as uninspired and prosaic as it sounds, as this attempt at an in-depth look or even a thought-provoking fable with regards to anger and inter-societal relations is done with the skill of a child at a pinata who hasn’t realised he needs glasses yet. It’s hard to see what the movie is really trying to say to us other than ‘people are angry sometimes because their lives are stressful’. There is no socioeconomic lens offered to the problem for example, or geographic or even psychological. The chance encounter with a homicidal maniac in the street does little for real-world resonance. Crowe’s catchy line mentioned twice (ugh) in the trailer relating to finally learning what a bad day is really like hints more at a slasher schlock genre rather than anything intricately psychological. The decision to never tell us the full back story of our villain has more of a touch of a bareboned childhood boogieman rather than any sort of Cormac McCarthy-esque omission leading to mystery and intrigue. We leave the movie theatre without any palpable cause for rumination, but rather a desire to get as far away from heavy Russel Crowe and his inconsistent accents as quickly as humanly possible.
Perhaps a more striking chord that could have been struck would have been related to the clear apathy that the lack of structures in American public life create. The only help which the protagonist receives is a brief congregation of characters at a gas station, as any emergency services are slow to respond in that busy American landscape. That does give a sense of the phantasmagoria as she attempts to resolve her situation alone, a gut-churning decision to make with her immature-looking son in the back seat. The compounding of that lack of help in a bustling individualised society (even if the police are good guys in this fictitious world), makes for some scary viewing, and can only be seen as a missed opportunity for a more in-depth look, particularly in the current climate.
That said, if you want to be spooked a bit, witness some fairly magnificent suburban vistas and enjoy some strong performances from two lead actors with a demonstrable mastery over their craft, this movie has something for you. It will also, I would imagine, be a relative success at the box office given its small-scale production. As far as any hopes of becoming a genuine psychologically enthralling film that will stick in the memory for more than six months are concerned however, I’m afraid this movie has stalled at a green light, and is worthy of a polite but pronounced beep of the horn.
