Courtesy 20th Century Studios
Pretty amazing that it’s been 100 years since Hitchcock’s first major film, Number 13, and so many filmmakers are still emulating that master of suspense. You’ll find DNA writ by the legendary director all over Damien Power’s No Exit, a simple but tense everything-goes-wrong piece based on the novel by Taylor Adams, and while we never quite reach the dizzying heights of a film like Saboteur or the sickening lows of Psycho, Hulu’s newest original film does keep things tense and fresh enough to stay watchable throughout.
In No Exit, young Darby (relative newcomer Havana Rose Liu) is a struggling addict who flees rehab upon learning her mother has suffered an aneurysm in the next state over. Nobody wants Darby at the hospital, but she’s gonna go all the same, right up until a massive snowstorm maroons her in some California mountain visitor’s center with an assorted handful of other weirdos who have issues all their own.
There’s the former Marine (Dennis Haysbert, aka the Allstate guy and an accomplished multi-medium actor) and his retired nurse wife (the ever-underrated Dale Dickey), plus the mysterious heartthrob (Danny Ramirez) and the fidgety loner weirdo (David Rysdahl), all of whom seem harmless right up until Darby pops outside in search of a cell signal, only to find a young girl tied up in one of her fellow stranded’s van. Too bad about that spotty cell service, huh?
What follows starts as a fairly simple whodunnit premise with Darby attempting to suss out the others, but as she tries ever harder to not let on how much she knows amid emerging personal histories and the ticking clock of her mother’s potential demise, she ultimately finds things are darker than she thought, and as the snow bears down and inexplicably refuses to pile up on cars, the situation devolves into the worst night ever.
Kudos to Power and writers Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari for a more nuanced depiction of addiction than “this person is a loser,” and kudos to Liu as well for the quiet terror she elicits with little more than darting eyes and tense glances. Playing against Haysbert’s gravitas and Dickey’s quiet rage, she becomes a lightning rod for ricocheting emotions, even as Rysdahl turns in a so-so performance; Ramirez’s character eventually becomes something powerful, but it takes time.
“Twist” might not be the right word for how it all goes down, but once the final wrinkle reveals itself, No Exit briefly positions itself as a film with something to say: What might we do if we were desperate enough, and can we ever truly know the motivations of those we think we know and love?
7
+Better than you’d think; Liu=fantastic
-More tell than show
No Exit
Directed by Power
With Liu, Haysbert, Dickey, Ramirez and Rysdahl
Hulu, R, 95 min.
