Rating: C
Dir: Chris Cullari, Jennifer Raite
Star: Malin Akerman, Lorenza Izzo, Chris Messina, Sandrine Holt
I guess this grade is not terrible, considering the film is basically two women staggering around the desert for an hour and a half. For a while, it looked like it was going to be significantly higher, playing effectively on a sense of paranoia and desperation. However, there’s a point where the cracks begin to show, and once that happens, there’s no turning back. The women in question are Jillian (Akerman) and Blair (Izzo), who are making a break to escape from The Aviary. This is a “self-help” community, located in the middle of the New Mexico desert, run by Seth (Messina). My usage of quotes should clue you in to the fact it’s more of a cult, with Seth as its guru.
Their aim is to reach Gallup, but they end up turned around, and twenty-five miles in the wrong direction. With dwindling resources, the pair begin to struggle mentally as well as physically, becoming suspicious of each other’s actions and motivations. It doesn’t help that Seth, and his former deputy, Delilah (Holt), are buried deep in both their psyches, and pop up at in opportune moments to lecture them, pose awkward questions or prod at long-buried (or not-so buried) scars – again, both mental and physical. This works, because the audience is pulled into the events, whether genuine or delusional. You can’t be sure what’s objectively real, and you end up sharing the characters’ disorientation.
It is, however, the kind of thing which can only be sustained for so long. Eventually, the film has to quit talkin’ and start chalkin’. That’s where the script is not able to deliver. It needs to lean on contrived notions like a laptop they’ve been lugging around the desert. Not only do they guess Seth’s password in about three attempts (no capital letters, numbers or symbols – what is this, 1993?), it contains a series of “therapy” videos which conveniently – and lazily – fill in the back story needed. This results in one final surprise as reality loses its tenuous hold. Though I’m not exactly going out on a limb here, when I say it will come as considerably less of a shock to the audience than to Jillian.
I was enjoying things more when the pair were going in circles round the desert, gradually going insane. Though this always seemed like a poorly thought-out escape plan. Was wandering for days through arid, mountainous terrain with a couple of protein bars really the only way to escape Seth’s clutches? Fortunately, both actresses are charismatic enough to make you overlook these wilderness survival skill concerns. The occasional moment when the film does manage to yank the rug from under, kept me viewing, albeit with inevitably diminishing returns. In the end, it is defeated by its own dishonesty, with too much information kept, not only from the audience but even from its own characters. I couldn’t help feeling they deserved better than that.