NO EXIT (2022)

Studio:     Hulu/20th Century Studios
Director:    Damien Power
Writer:     Andrew Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari
Producer:  Scott Frank
Stars:     Havana Rose Liu, Danny Ramirez, David Rysdahl, Dale Dickey, Mila Harris, Dennis Haysbert

Review Score:

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Summary:

After finding a captive girl in a van outside, a young woman must uncover the kidnapper among four strangers snowed in at a remote rest stop.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Upon learning her estranged mother is dying, recovering drug addict Darby escapes her rehab facility, steals an orderly’s car, and begins a frantic drive from Sacramento to Salt Lake City. When fierce snowfall closes the road however, a highway patrol officer directs Darby to a remote visitor’s center to wait out the storm with stranded drivers Ash, Lars, former nurse Sandi Lowery, and Sandi’s husband Ed, a retired Marine.

While outside searching for cell service, Darby hears a captive girl screaming for help from a van. Unable to get into the van or call 911, Darby takes a photo of the van’s Nevada license plate and returns inside to try to identify the kidnapper.

Everyone plays cards together. Based on his skittish behavior and him identifying a Nevada destination, Darby concludes Lars is the kidnapper. Darby goes to the restroom and tries to send a text with the license plate photo, but it doesn’t go through.

Darby sneaks outside and gets inside the van. Darby sees that the captive girl is wearing a medical alert bracelet. Lars also enters the van, forcing Darby to hide. Lars calls the girl Jay and mentions taking her to Uncle Kenny’s. After Lars goes back to the visitor’s center, Darby promises to come back for Jay and also exits the van.

Darby privately tells Ash about Lars and the kidnapped girl. Darby and Ash realize Lars knows Darby found out about the girl after Lars finds her footprints in the snow near his van.

Darby sneaks back to the van and removes Jay’s duct tape gag. Jay reveals two men kidnapped her. Darby spots Ash with Lars and realizes they are working together.

Darby tries to flee, but Ash captures her at gunpoint. Meanwhile, Lars tries to distract Sandi and Ed, the latter of whom suspects something strange is going on. Ash tells Darby that he and Lars are holding Jay for ransom. Sandi interrupts their encounter, so Lars forces Darby to play it off as though they are being romantically intimate.

Everyone reconvenes at the card table. Ash, Lars, and Darby all notice Jay escaping the van outside. Darby lures Ash into a restroom where she tries to attack him, but Ash subdues her. Lars interrupts, allowing Darby a moment to steal their keys.

Ash forces Darby to help look for Jay in the woods. Darby learns Ash is actually helping “Uncle Kenny” traffic children, although Lars naively believes they are helping Jay find a better home. Ash fires his gun when Darby falls down an embankment and slips away.

The gunshot draws Ed’s attention. Ed sees Jay collapsed in the snow outside and brings her into the visitor’s center where Sandi can help treat her. Darby returns to the building and tells Ed and Sandi what Ash and Lars are really up to.

From outside, Ash and Lars engage in a standoff with Ed. With Jay in danger of dying from her illness, Ed and Darby bargain to return the van keys in exchange for Jay’s medicine. Ash instead retrieves a gas can and threatens to set the building on fire.

Jay regains consciousness and recognizes Sandi as her wealthy family’s disgruntled housemaid. A flashback shows Sandi helped plot Jay’s abduction. Sandi tearfully tells Ed she was trying to fix a financial crisis he didn’t know about.

Ash and Lars enter the visitor’s center to hold Ed at gunpoint while Sandi administers Jay’s medicine. Sandi tries to explain Jay’s abduction as a simple ransom, and she is stunned when Darby reveals Ash is actually involved in child trafficking.

Ash shoots Ed and Sandy. He then uses a nail gun to pin Darby’s wrist to a wall. Having stolen her phone, Ash taunts Darby by showing her texts confirming her mother’s death. However, Ash also discovers Darby’s distress text finally went through.

Ash threatens to shoot Jay with the nail gun unless Darby reveals where the van keys are. Darby confesses the keys are stashed in a restroom. Ash tasks Lars with holding the two girls at gunpoint while he retrieves the keys.

Darby has Jay turn off the lights to distract Lars. After snorting cocaine to get through the pain, Darby uses a claw hammer to pry herself free from the wall. Darby then wrestles the gun away from Lars.

Ash reenters to find Darby holding Lars hostage. Ash fires his nail gun, but inadvertently shoots Lars in his head. While Ash watches Lars die, Darby escapes to her car with Jay.

Darby tries to drive away, but Ash shoots out a tire with the nail gun, which causes Darby to crash. Ash sets the visitor’s center on fire. A police officer arrives at the scene. Darby fires a bullet at Ash, so the cop fires a bullet into Darby. Ash recovers Darby’s dropped gun and uses it to kill the cop. Ash tries to shoot Darby, but discovers his gun is out of bullets. Darby stabs Ash in the neck with a screwdriver she pocketed earlier. She then crawls to the dead officer and uses his radio to call for help.

Darby returns to rehab. 48 days later, Darby’s estranged sister Devon visits Darby to make amends.

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Review:

Ever stop to think about all of the sinister things that could possibly take place at a remote rest stop in the middle of nowhere? On an interstate drive I took overnight by myself years back, I stopped at an out-of-the-way turnoff on a fairly desolate strip of road, probably somewhere in Utah. It was cold, snowy, and definitely dark. There wasn’t another soul in sight. No cameras either. Being a horror-minded person, naturally my prevailing notion was, “Anyone could do anything to me out here right now and who knows how long it would be before someone found my body.” Plug that thought into the back of your head during your next solo road trip.

Recovering drug addict Darby encounters similar danger during her snowbound experience at an isolated visitor’s center. Upon learning of her estranged mother’s impending death, Darby breaks out of rehab for the umpteenth time, steals an orderly’s car, and starts speeding towards Salt Lake City. She won’t get there though, because raging snowfall strands Darby at a highway rest stop with four other folks stuck waiting out the storm.

One more person then gets added into the mix. When Darby goes outside to search for cell service, she hears a captive girl pleading for help from behind a duct tape gag in the back of a van. Darby can’t get inside the vehicle. She can’t call 911. Uncertain of the situation, all she can do for now is go back inside and try to find the kidnapper before this frying pan can fall into a fire.

There turns out to be much more to “No Exit” than that, although the movie’s marketing bills it as a paranoia thriller whose whodunit is a key part of the premise. Accordingly, I went into the film thinking it was a mystery you could try to solve at home. At first, all we know is that the girl’s van has Nevada plates. Over the course of a card game with the quintet, we learn various background bits about where they’re from and what they do. Maybe I’d been binging too much “Murderville,” but I was watching “No Exit” with an eye for cataloguing every innocuous action and slip of the tongue as a possible clue for identifying the culprit.

If you too are planning to jot notes in a mental notebook, don’t bother. We learn who the kidnapper is less than halfway through the runtime, at which point plotting switches its mode of suspense to cat-and-mouse tension that comes from hide-and-seek chases and quietly threatening confrontations.

After a long start to establish Darby’s drug problem and troubled family situation that don’t amount to a whole lot in the end, “No Exit” seemingly settles in for a character study nestled inside a chamber drama. The card game functions as an obvious opportunity for everyone to eye each other suspiciously during the “getting to know you” stage. The visitor center’s snug rooms, and the parking lot outside, feel like stages rather than real locations, so the theatricality of the scenery sacrifices authenticity for person-to-person intimacy.

This artificial feeling ends up working in favor of the film’s fiction somewhat, because every narrative element ultimately morphs “No Exit” into a fully manufactured fantasy. The kidnapped girl turns out to have a medical condition that effectively turns her into a countdown clock. One of the motorists used to be a nurse, and another used to be a Marine, and of course their particular skill sets prove useful to specific plot points. By the time the story introduces a wholly preposterous last twist, all anyone in the audience can do is thwip their lips with a grin. Compared to how simply everything starts, the climax goes completely crazy with a massive fire, a car crash, several standoffs, and several shootouts too. In the end, we’ve come such a long way from five strangers playing cards at a table, we can’t help but involuntarily applaud the filmmakers for going all in on implausibility that nonetheless makes for entertainingly absurd escapism.

Based on a novel by Taylor Adams, “No Exit” conveniently clips along from beat to beat in a way that would make any excited screenwriter say, “Ooh, this is working out neatly!” An actor then picks up those pages, sees multiple morality flip-flops for each role, then realizes they’ve struck a performer’s dream come true. A director reads that same script, sees one main location with five primary actors and thinks, “This will be straightforward to stage.” In other words, it’s easy to see why everyone gave “No Exit” a green light and eagerly got on board.

For the viewer, “No Exit” is certainly no masterpiece of tension-filled mystique. Conversely, it’s not easily dismissed as a throwaway thriller. Architected to be a tight story that tidily ties each piece together, it’s a pleasantly palatable option for a quick bite of suspense on a laid-back night of playing it safe with your movie choice. It’s always a plus to spend time with Dennis Haysbert and Dale Dickey too, and since the film doesn’t demand your full engagement, you’ll even get to play on your phone without ever having to press Pause.

Review Score: 60

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