Rating: C+
Dir: David Axe
Sta: Caylin Sams, Lorelei Linklater, Rachel Tracy, Rachel Petsiavas
Three movies in, and I feel I’m beginning to get a handle on Axe’s output. It may be weird and not very successful (Bae Wolf), or weird and surprisingly successful (Acorn). But the common thread is… yep, weird. Though on further consideration, “weird” may not be the best choice of words, implying a strangeness that isn’t necessarily present. “Not what you would expect” is probably closer to the truth. I mean, given the title and poster, you would have certain preconceptions. Yet this starts where those expectations would seem to end, with Sara Bite (Sams) stumbling out of the forest, covered in blood, with a makeshift spear in one hand, and a severed head in the other.
The film we get is not particularly interested in what happened to her up until that point. It’s more concerned with the aftermath, and the way Sara comes to terms with her experience. This involves the moderately helpful assistance of her sister, Sam (Tracy), the attention of the media, and for a long period in the middle, the making of an exploitation film, titled Endangered, based on her experience. She somewhat bonds with Tara (Linklater), the lead actress who plays her, and is perfectly happy for the makers to fabricate a “fourth act” as they see fit. However, on seeing the finished product, she is reduced to hysterical laughter. Closure, it appears, can only be found by returning, heavily armed (top), to the scene of the trauma.
Which is, sadly, where the film doesn’t work. A shame, because up until then it has been interesting in the “not what you would expect” way mentioned above. It’s not the horror or thriller Tubi classifies it. The poster tagline. “Her horror is just beginning,” is particularly inappropriate by normal genre standards – unless you’re with Jean-Paul Sartre, and are of the opinion that hell is other people. It’s more of a drama with black comedy elements, until we get to the ending, where it suddenly does a full 180 (360? 540? Possibly even a 720) and turns into Skullduggery, one of only two films ever to receive our rarest rating, the coveted question-mark. Yeah. Bold and capitals please. NOT WHAT YOU WOULD EXPECT.
I did have thoughts about how I would have ended this, and they are clearly radically different from Axe’s. This is fine: it’s his movie, and what I enjoyed about Acorn was that sense of directorial ownership, regardless of what the viewer wanted. It’s present here too, except the ending sits ill at odds with the sense of cynicism which permeates much of what has gone before, in particular the meta-commentary about low-budget cinema. We instead get something which is not quite everyone joining hands and singing Kumbaya. However, it’s considerably closer to that than… um, what you would expect. If you’re looking for a film committed to this wilful confounding of notions, Left One Alone will hit the spot. The jury’s still out on whether or not that’s necessarily a good thing.