No Exit – A Review

Addiction is at the core of the film No Exit from director Damien Power and screenwriters Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari. The whole narrative can be viewed through the lens of recovery. No one can save you; you have to want to save yourself. The addict has to be the one to ask for help. It’s dark. And much of this film is shot in dark exterior blizzard scenes.

We meet our protagonist Darby (played by Havana Rose Liu) at rehab. One she doesn’t want to be at and it’s quickly established she’s already burned all her bridges on the outside, so much so they don’t even want her to come to see her hospitalized mother. However, she’s resourceful and makes a daring escape and heads on her way, only to be driven off the road by a blizzard and have to wait it out in a visitor center with other roadside stranded. Except she quickly discovers that one of the people she has to wait out the storm with, without any phone service, has a young girl tied up in their van.

Over a game of bullshit (a nice choice of device that makes for good callbacks later), you see Darby trying to suss out who the kidnapper is based on the limited clues she has acquired. Your initial instincts at the top of the scene are for no one to fall into her trap, or if they do, for them to be a red herring. However, she quickly finds her suspect (they are very obvious), so a seasoned thriller watcher knows to be on the lookout for more twists.

A lot of coincidence has to happen for you to buy a lot of what takes place in the film, but if you go along for the ride, the twists are enjoyable, and one of them, in particular, caught me off guard in a delightful way.

Like most movies set during winter, there was some tragic fake snow to be seen, but otherwise, the film utilized its minimal production design to great effect.

I was not surprised to find out this was filmed during the pandemic; its sparse cast and one central location make it ideal for covid safety measures. It is a thriller though, and those tend to utilize the same principle, so it would be interesting to see if the story became more isolated as a result of not going into production until Covid or not.

Now, in horror/thrillers, there’s usually a question of gore. This film is fairly low on the gore scale, with most incidents not showing much. There is one exception, and it is very well telegraphed, so for the queasy, it is easy to know when to close your eyes.

SPOILERS AHEAD

If the film was a straight thriller and not meant to be an allegory for beginning/choosing the journey of recovery, the stronger ending would’ve been just after Darby radios for help. That moment when you don’t know if they understood her message and will send help or if she and Jay (played by Mila Harris) won’t be rescued. Instead, it ends months later when she’s back in the rehab clinic, being an active participant, looking a lot more at peace, talking about her sobriety, and being visited by her sister. This ending works because at the start of the film she was at rehab against her will and her sister didn’t want to see her even when their mother died. Now at the end, only after she made the actual choice to seek help (call for over the radio and then actively participate in rehab of her own free will) a path to rekindling a relationship with her family was created.

The film also stars: Danny Ramirez, David Rysdahl, Dennis Haysbert, and Dale Dickey.

No Exit is available on Disney+