No Exit: Movie Review

Cast: Havana Rose Liu, Dennis Haysbert, Danny Ramirez, Dale Dickey, David Rysdahl

Director: Andy Canny

An intimate Covid-fuelled  shoot aimed at bringing a psychological edge to a chamber piece No Exit may want to be, but what it ends up being as far from the aspirations as it is the reality of its execution.

The Sky is Everywhere’s Havana Rose Liu stars as Darby,  a struggling alcoholic, who upon receiving the news her mum is dying breaks out of rehab and blusters straight into a blizzard.

Forced to get off the road, she pulls up at a stop where she encounters former military man Ed (Dennis Haysbert), his ex-nurse wife Sandi (Dale Dickey), the jittery Lars (David Rysdahl) and confident Ash (Danny Ramirez).

Settling in for a night of being forced to get to know strangers, Darby finds her world turned upside down when she discovers a seemingly-kidnapped girl in the back of a van outside - and tries to work out who exactly is behind the young captive's plight...

No Exit could be a good thriller, a smart blast  of something that uses the setting to maximum effect, and puts its relative talent to good use.

But what it ends up doing is squandering all of that for some 60 minutes of dragging matters out, before going fully blown into overload and a psychotic final 25 minutes.  There are some clever twists within the material, the majority of which are to be honest, handled perfunctorily by a script that really only has five players to deal with.

It helps less that obvious pointers as to who's involved become increasingly clear early on, leading to any tension dissipating before it's even had time to simmer and boil over. Liu's work is solid, but the script doesn't demand much from her, and with the murky work of a blizzard-set cinematographer, there are scant chances to shine.

The script borders on laughable toward the end, as the gorier elements come to the fore - and an overall feeling of predictability mixed in with a feeling it could have been more means that No Exit becomes a dead end adaptation of its 2017 source material before its 90 minutes have run out.

No Exit is streaming now on Disney+