So, Kim Basinger is a harried gated-community mom, making a last dash to the mall on Christmas Eve to pick up some last minute wrapping paper. Of course, parking is a nightmare, so when she runs across a car that’s parked over the line and taking up two spaces, she gives in to her frustrations and leaves a nasty note on the windshield. Turns out the owners of that car are a gang of young criminals and they don’t take to kindly to her attitude, so it looks like those last minute gifts will have to wait, Kim! You’re going to spend your Christmas Eve being chased through the woods by some psycho killers.
This movie has a fine premise; well, actually, it’s better than fine. It’s really scary. Like this is one of my biggest fears, running into a gang of sociopaths who just want to **** somebody up. I think that kind of random encounter is even scarier than being targeted by a serial killer. Remember that sequence in Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals when Jake Gyllenhaal and his wife and daughter on the highway? Like that’s one of the scariest sequences in any movie ever in my opinion. So, this movie has a premise that is kind of buried deep in my lizard brain as one of the scariest situations ever. And I was not scared or in suspense for one minute of this movie. Director Susan Montford understands that she needs to put her main character in situations that would be tense and frightening in real life, but she doesn’t have a handle on the mechanics of generating fear and tension in a movie. So, this movie is honestly just really dull. Even at a relatively brief run time of less than ninety minutes, it drags a lot and feels really padded. Because the movie has an imperative to get to the action, it only takes about twenty minutes to kind of build Basinger’s character and that stuff, showing her dealing with frustrations and disappointments and just basically being unhappy with her life, is the most engaging stuff in the movie. Because once the action starts, it’s just scene after scene after scene of people running around in the woods yelling and you often can’t even tell what’s happening and it’s just so repetitive. And the movie makes a big deal at the beginning about how Basinger’s character is mechanically minded and when she initially escapes from the villains, she manages to grab her toolbox out of her vehicle. But this doesn’t actually go anywhere. I was hoping to see her use the tools in some creative ways, to set traps or something. But, no, she just uses them as blunt instruments. I suppose this is kind of realistic, but it’s not that creative or dramatically satisfying. I will say that the tire iron kill is downright gnarly though. It’s probably the level of detail on the gore that pushes this one from “thriller” to “horror.” But I was neither thrilled nor scared, so what do I know?
Basinger isn’t very good here; I’ve never found her to be a super-effective actress and she has trouble displaying fear in this one. I did kind of like Lukas Haas as the ringleader of the gang. He plays him as kind of annoyed, like he’s the one who keeps getting in over his head every time they try to kill Basinger and she just manages to get away again. And, yes, this movie has a standard issue “I know you can hear me” monologue at the end, just like all of these do, but Haas underplays it, like he’s just tired and not even really angry anymore. The speech is actually pretty well-written too. I actually liked that scene and the way it surprisingly humanizes the main villain. And the movie has a really cool opening shot. Did I mention that yet? I don’t think so. It’s cool; it’s a long, long single take going through the maze like streets of a gated community. I thought maybe Montford actually knew what she was doing when the movie started with that shot. But I guess not. I mean, not really. This one’s just a pretty big whiff. 1 star.
tl;dr – Kim Basinger is pursued by a gang of psycho killers on Christmas Eve in this forgettable, repetitive, dull thriller; completely free of tension & creativity despite a solid premise. 1 star.