★★
“With hindsight, I shouldn’t have bothered.”
I must confess, I was perversely intrigued when I read a review on the IMDb, apparently from one of the directors, disowning this film: “Terrible, and despite it having my name on it, I had no say in the final cut.” While it is true to say that the synopsis – “Based on true events, a girl fights for her life on the Road – Tears Of Souls – chased by a gang of slave traffickers” – is almost entirely inaccurate, it’s not that dreadful. Oh, it’s… not good, to be sure. But I’ve seen worse (hello, Agent Jade Black): it’s not annoyingly dreadful, thanks mostly to a decent central performance by Thomas.
She plays Nicky, who is driving through the English countryside when her car stalls out, beginning an escalating series of misadventures. For this particular area is apparently ground zero for a series of mysterious disappearances of women, who subsequently turn up dead in what the police call suicide. Of course, that’s far from the case, with what appears to be a loose-knit collaboration between a pair of psychos (Sives and Simpson), predating the highways and byways out of a truck-stop, and certain elements of the authorities. Quite where the “slave traffickers” mentioned by the synopsis come in, escapes me entirely. To be honest, on reading that bit, I was expecting this to unfold in the middle East, rather than middle England.
Nicky is likeable enough and does, at least, appear slightly smarter than the average victim in these things. Or, at least, is not required to behave with the idiocy which is par for the course. However, the downside is that the sensible thing – staying locked in her car – is far from thrilling cinema. There is way too much sitting by the side of the road for this to work, even if you take into account the whole “being menaced by a pair of psychos” thing. Eventually, even they get bored with standing around, passing comment, and smash the side window, forcing Nicky out of her relatively safe-space and into the surrounding woods. From where there’s much running around, until we eventually circle back to the opening, in which she covers herself in fuel at an all-night petrol station, and threatens to set herself on fire after the cashier refuses to let her in.
There is only one scene which genuinely sticks in my mind, which sees Nicky strangle one of the people after her. It’s notable largely for the length, being an apparently endless exercise with the victim thrashing around in increasing desperation, trying to escape. The scene is nasty, brutal and tough to watch, which is exactly the way violence like this should be depicted. It also stands in sharp contrast to the pedestrian direction in the rest of the film, which contains little that is memorable or interesting. Maybe we Brits are just too gosh darned polite to do this kind of thing well?
Dir: Avril E. Russell, Orson Nava
Star: Antonia Thomas, Jamie Sives, Jay Simpson. James Floyd