Brutal ‘No Exit’ contains a lot of regrettable choices
Kirsty Griffin/©2021 20th Century Studios.
The irresistible ad for “No Exit” promised a sort of whodunit bottle episode, suggesting a group of travelers caught in a room, trying to figure out who the killer is. That’s … not quite accurate. In fact, the Hulu thriller is two blah movies in one, stirred together like peanut butter and glass cleaner. Consume at your own risk.
Perhaps some would argue that it’s useful to have heavy, seemingly unrelated backstory for a main character before they are thrown into an unexpected and very dangerous situation. Those people are very much invited to try to persuade me that this movie, based on the novel by Taylor Adams, benefits by spending a while setting up Darby’s (Havana Rose Liu) struggles with drug addiction only to throw her into a completely different movie about kidnapping and fighting for your life against a very human killer—with drugs coming into play in a way that turns the term “a stretch” into the understatement of the week.
Director Damien Power absolutely understands how to milk the dimly lit tension from the middle-of-nowhere rest stop at which Darby, Ash (Danny Ramirez), Ed (Dennis Haysbert), Sandi (Dale Dickey), and Lars (David Rysdahl) are stranded during a terrible snowstorm. Darby had busted out of rehab to see her ailing mother in the hospital, despite Darby’s sister’s objections. But she takes on a different, no less urgent mission after discovering a child tied up in the van outside. “No Exit” reveals its first answer too quickly, thinking that a twist or two on the way will surprise and maintain a sense of frozen, confusing doom. Not the case; there are too few suspects, and the escalation of both extreme violence and heroism tests credibility and tolerance.
Playing even easy mental games usually brings some enjoyment, and Liu’s desperation anchors a story that feels oddly matched to a 90-minute thriller. If that trailer made you think this thing would be fun, the word “brutal” in the headline should have already answered that question.
C
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