Rating: C-
Dir: Thomas Pickering
Star: Levi Heaton, Richard Galloway, Roger Bingham, Isabella Percival
I suspect how you feel about this may depend on whether or not you work out where it’s going. I didn’t get all the details, certainly. However, almost from the beginning, I had strong suspicions, and consequently, was largely waiting for the movie to tell me what I already knew. Given how much of the film is invested in this… It’s a problem. Events unfold mostly on Christmas Eve, though with flashbacks to points in the preceding three months. Several women have gone missing, their fate unknown, and chatter is circulating about the possibility of a serial killer being responsible.
The gossip isn’t wrong, as we find out. Alan (Galloway) attempts to hijack a car (top), only for the woman driver to attempt to set him on fire. It does not end well for her. The problem is, Alan can’t drive. I should mention this takes place in Britain, where an adult being unable to drive is only somewhat weird [I didn’t get a license until my mid-twenties]. So he quickly finds another vehicle, driven by Marie (Heaton). She is clearly not having a great day, judging by the black eye she is already sporting. It’s about to get a whole lot worse. Alan not only makes her his impromptu chauffeur, he insists she find him a way out of the country, regardless of the impending festivities.
There’s potential in the idea of a slasher road movie. Imagine driving around the countryside, with Jason Vorhees in the back seat. Alan is, obviously, a little different from Jason: considerably more chatty, for one. However, the resulting conversation is not particularly exciting. You don’t get any particular insights into what makes either Alan or Marie tick (though in hindsight, it makes more sense for one of them). There are a few points where characters seem to make decisions for the benefit of the movie, rather than themselves. For example, Alan opting to switch vehicles. While this leads to a tense sequence of stealthy home-invasion, I couldn’t help thinking that, oh, going to a petrol station and refuelling his existing car would have been a simpler, if less dramatic, option.
Then, it all changes. We get to see more of the flashbacks, radically changing their meaning, and also some entirely new scenes, filling in other gaps. It definitely feels like the Pickering brothers – James wrote the script – decided to go big when it was time to go home. I admire the ambition in this ending; I just can’t say it worked for me. Though it does live up to the tagline on the poster: “Everybody loves a feel-good Christmas movie. This isn’t one of them.” The soundtrack, largely of mutated festive tunes, enhances the “Bah, humbug” feel nicely. It seems to be the kind of film intended to appeal to the Scrooge in us all.
[The film is out now on VOD, in both the US and UK, through 4 Digital]