Dark Country actor Thomas Jane’s first venture behind the camera as director, and although the final product is a bit muddy and perplexing, it also creates an atmosphere of impenetrable mental fog and noxious delirium that’s in itself a success, even if the whole thing amounts to a big question mark. Jane has already proved to be a stalwart action hero, charismatic leading man and talented performer (anyone raising their hand to disagree with me gets a copy of Mark Pellington’s I Melt With You hucked across the classroom right at their head). Working off a script from veteran writer Tab Murphy, Jane concocts what can only be described as a Twilight Zone episode on opiates, with a hint of sketchy Midnite Movie added for flavour. Does it work? Yes and no. The story is nearly indecipherable except to someone glued to the screen inches away, kept abreast of every minute plot shift and disorienting, mumbled bit of dialogue. Jane and Lauren German play a couple driving from somewhere to somewhere, who encounter a freaky, whacked out hitchhiker (Chris Browning) somewhere around the Nevada desert. He’s bloodied up something fierce, babbling on about nothing and from the moment he arrives, their turns turns dour. It’s anyone’s guess what goes on from there… a dead body they must contend with, a suspicious state trooper (nice Ron Perlman cameo) on their tail, flashbacks to a weird encounter at a desolate roadside diner, ever creeping fog that seems to have followed Jane over from Stephen King’s The Mist to wreak more havoc, and so it goes. Plot is of little importance to him as a director though, and instead he seems more intent on clouding up the viewer’s perception of events until it’s more like a shadowy fever dream full of dead ends and few answers. An atmosphere piece with a logic tank that’s run dry, but succeeds in whipping up a neat nightmarish road trip through confusion and paranoia, if not much else.
-Nate Hill
Podcasting Them Softly 