★★★
“Tabling the argument.”
This is fairly sparse, unfolding entirely in the single location of a furniture factory, over the course of a single night. The central character is Karen (Terrazzino), a single mother who has just taken on the job of a cleaner and overnight security guard at the premises, in order to provide for her young daughter, who is ill on the night Karen has to start work. These issues quickly pale into insignificance – though not irrelevance – when a group of masked men enter the building, looking to hunt down and kill her. With the doors chained from the outside and the phone lines cut, Karen is entirely on her own against the bigger and stronger, but fortunately not smarter, intruders.
That’s basically it, and this is definitely not one if you’re looking for complex themes or nuanced characters. It’s straightforward survival horror, with the first half closer to stalk ‘n’ slash territory, consisting mostly of Karen being chased around the labyrinthine building, hiding out and being discovered. Things do become more action-oriented the deeper we get into things. There is a certain element of fortune in the ways she defeats some of her opponents, although this is probably necessary given the size disparity, and there’s a chaotic messiness to them which is effective. The one which stands out is the death by toilet plunger (no, the other end), which is drawn out to the point where it becomes almost blackly humourous.
That said, I did still roll my eyes at some elements, most obviously when Karen disguises herself as one of the predators. It’s an unnecessary push of believability, which would have been best forgotten. On the other hand, it is nice that the damage isn’t all one way. By the time Karen gets down to the final assailant (Oakley), she’s certainly far from uninjured, and this only escalates during their battle. If you likely will not be surprised in the slightest by the identity of the last man standing, it brings a deeply personal edge to the fight, and in addition, certainly gives Karen additional motivation. The result is considerably more of a brawl than anything, neither party giving or receiving quarter, and using whatever is nearby to their advantage.
The scripting here is so bare-bones as to be positively anorexic. For example, the backstory for Karen is put over in a way which you could either call “tersely efficient” or “laughably negligible,” depending on how charitable you might be feeling. While I lean somewhat towards the former, I’d prefer it to have done so in order to get to the meat of the matter faster, in lieu of the extended game of Hide ‘n’ Seek which occupies the first half. However, the film makes good use of its setting, and once things kick off, there’s precious little slack there either. Terrazzino gives a better physical performance than a dramatic one, but given the circumstances, that’s probably the way you want it to skew.
Dir: Greg Swinson and Ryan Thiessen
Star: Natalie Terrazzino, JC Oakley III, Trevor Tucker, Hunter Tinney