★★★
“It’s like Thelma and Louise. Meets The Hitcher. In Wolf Creek.”
Yes, while there may not be a lot new here, the combination is at least somewhat interesting, and it’s put together solidly enough. Two students, Nina (Alexander) and Melissa (Terry) are on a cross-country drive, when they get stopped for speeding. Melissa makes a pass at the cop, but it’s an encounter that goes badly wrong, and she ends up beating him up with his own night-stick. When the duo get back on the road however, they find themselves being pursued by a police-car, which clearly has very bad intentions: with gas running low and – inevitably – no cellphone service to be found, can they survive?
Despite the lack of names in the cast, there was clearly some significant cash involved in this project; some fairly brutal destruction of automobiles, and helicopter footage too, help give this a sense of quality. We were rather less contrived by the dialogue, which sometimes seemed so artificial and contrived as to be utterly forced. There were a few moments when the plot had us rolling our eyes too, such as when the girls, wandering around in the middle of nowhere, stumble onto a house that happens to be…well, let’s just say, “What are the odds against that?” The villain, for reasons necessary to the plot, remains entirely anonymous and that makes him a far less scary adversary that, say, Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher, who gave absolute evil a very human face.
Still, when things get rolling, especially in the final third, there’s a good sense of momentum and “anything can happen”, which overcomes many of the shortcomings. The final showdown would seem a bit of a cheap ripoff from Death Proof…except that Movin’ dates back to 2005, so actually pre-dates Tarantino’s grindhouse homage. Which is interesting, given QT’s fondness for wholesale thievery in the plot department. Indeed, that also means it pre-dates Wolf Creek, though you don’t deserve a free pass just because your movie failed to find distribution for two years. Overall, though, not too bad, and despite some eye-rolling, we were entertained enough.
Dir: Eric Chambers
Stars: Marquita Terry, Layla Alexander, Matthew Glave
a.k.a. Lost in Plainview