RADIUS (2017)

Studio:       Epic Pictures
Director:    Caroline Labreche, Steeve Leonard
Writer:       Caroline Labreche, Steeve Leonard
Producer:  Anne-Marie Gelinas, Benoit Beaulieu, Jean Du Toit
Stars:     Diego Klattenhoff, Charlotte Sullivan, Brett Donahue

Review Score:

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Summary:

An amnesiac man must solve the mystery of why anyone who steps within 50 feet of him suddenly drops dead.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Liam Hartwell wakes from a truck crash with amnesia. Liam flags down a passing vehicle on the country road, but its driver suddenly drops dead. A dead bird also falls out of the sky.

Liam walks to a nearby diner to find everyone inside dead. A van crashes outside when its driver suddenly dies.

Liam makes his way to the secluded Connecticut home identified on his driver’s license. He tries warning a landscaper outside to move away from him, but that man also drops dead. After listening to news reports about the bodies at the diner, Liam eventually concludes that any living person or animal that comes within 50 feet of him will inexplicably die.

Two Woodmore police officers come to the house looking for Liam. Liam hides at a distance to avoid killing the cops. The officers leave after a flock of birds falls from the sky.

An amnesiac woman unaffected by Liam’s radius comes to the house looking for Liam. Identified only as Jane Doe, she explains that she was in the crash with Liam, and was told who he was after recovering from her injuries in a hospital.

Together, Liam and Jane set out to discover who they are and what happened as fragmented memories gradually come back to them. They return to the crash site and find a large black circle of dead vegetation on the ground.

Liam explains that animals and people who come near him drop dead. Disbelieving his story, Jane begins walking away as a cop stops to question Liam. When Jane gets far enough away, the officer drops dead. After testing their hypothesis on a goat, Liam and Jane realize that his death radius is nullified as long as Jane stands within it.

Liam and Jane go to a hospital for tests, hoping that doctors can discover what is going on. Liam learns that nothing is physically wrong with him. Liam and Jane hear on the news that Liam is wanted for the police officer’s murder. Cops arrive at the hospital. Jane and Liam flee, eventually escaping the hospital after nearly becoming separated by an elevator.

From a radio report about the hospital escape, Jane learns that her real name is Rose Daerwood and she has a husband named Sam. Liam and Rose track down Sam and eventually prove their claims to him after demonstrating the death radius on several pigeons.

Sam agrees to let the couple hide out in his store while they figure out what to do. When Rose finds her picture on a missing persons flyer, Sam explains that Rose had been distraught over the disappearance of her twin sister Lily Grayson. Rose’s trauma regarding the situation created a rift in their marriage, resulting in Rose storming out on the last night Sam saw her.

Rose has a flashback to preparing to jump off a bridge because of Lily. Liam stopped to talk her down, which is how she ended up in his truck.

Having been called by Sam, Smithburg police officers arrive at the shop. Sam, Liam, and Rose are all taken into custody. However, the cops as well as bystanders drop dead when Liam and Rose are separated, despite warnings to keep them together.

Sam stays behind to try explaining the situation to whoever comes next. Liam and Rose decide to make their way to a remote cabin Liam remembered from a dream.

While stopped at a gas station convenience store, Liam and Rose see a newscast that mentions an unknown cosmic event, causing them to conclude atmospheric lightning must have affected them. Recognizing the couple from news bulletins, a man in a truck follows Liam and Rose when they leave.

At the cabin, Rose finds a scrapbook and journal that reveal Liam was actually a serial killer responsible for abducting multiple women, including Rose’s sister. Rose finds an empty entry with her name and realizes Liam specifically targeted her to be his next victim.

On the lake outside at the same time, Liam also recalls his murderous past. To his horror, Liam remembers preparing to drug Rose when he crashed the truck. Rose was ready to kill Liam in an ensuing confrontation outside the wreck, but was stopped by a cosmic lightning strike that knocked them both unconscious.

Rose confronts Liam at gunpoint. Before their confrontation can conclude, the man who followed them from the gas station arrives with his son and another man. The three men capture the couple. Liam backs away from Rose to kill the three men, but not before the son shoots Rose first.

Liam rushes Rose to the hospital. As Rose is wheeled away, Liam shoots himself in the head in the hospital hallway.

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Review:

Liam just recovered from a car crash on a remote country road to find he has no memory of what happened or who he is.  If not for the driver’s license in his pocket, he wouldn’t know his name.

Liam flags down a passing car only to watch it careen down an embankment as its driver dies suddenly.  A bird overhead falls to the ground in similar fashion.  Liam frantically seeks help at a nearby diner, discovering nothing but corpses there too.

Initially racking his brain with wild ideas of a chemical outbreak or terrorist attack, Liam eventually draws a far more frightening conclusion.  He doesn’t know why, and he certainly doesn’t know how, but anyone who comes within 50 feet of Liam will inexplicably drop dead.

Anyone except Jane Doe, that is.  Claiming to have been a passenger in Liam’s vehicle, Jane came out of their crash with the same amnesia.  Somehow, she appears to be Liam’s antidote, as his death radius is nullified as long as Jane stands within it.  Together, this mystery man and woman must remember who they really are in order to uncover what happened, without piling up any more unfortunate bodies along the way.

The premise of “Radius” casts a spell of complete captivation just three minutes into the movie.  Crazy-ish concepts like this were more commonplace in the 80s and 90s, when Rutger Hauer and Mimi Rogers had to remain within 100 yards of each other lest their own heads explode.  We don’t see low-budget indies take on such tones as much in the 21st century, yet right away we are swept into a sci-fi Saturday night setting that packs “Outer Limits” intrigue into a “Twilight Zone” mystery.

Despite far-out fiction sending the movie in motion, “Radius” remains sensibly grounded within a compact feature.  The idea may be big, but scope stays small, starting on a single character and expanding the primary player roster to only three people by the time the last act hits full stride.

Simplicity is always a smart strategy when limited time and limited money influence how much can be accomplished.  “Radius” does well to pack as much punch as possible behind each penny, although it can feel hamstrung and stretched out as both plotting and pacing are forced to occupy more real estate than they necessarily need.  “Radius” is rarely uninteresting, yet it occasionally finds itself on a treadmill of movement that doesn’t always advance to a new position since so few tools are in play.

Diego Klattenhoff as Liam and Charlotte Sullivan as Jane aren’t exactly overflowing with personality.  How can they be when they’re playing people who literally have none?  Nevertheless, both actors fare fine, forcing their characters to have sympathetic charm almost purely through presence.  The audience is along more for the journey than for the companionship anyway.

Anyone looking to find fault with the story can criticize that “Radius” doesn’t dig as daringly deep as it can.  Given where the movie ends up, the script really could have charted unexpectedly twisty territory had it gone all in on the bond that builds between Liam and Jane.  I suspect that some will have similar “yeah, buts” regarding the setup’s potential versus what “Radius” chooses to do with it, which isn’t a fully mind-blowing exploration of a personal death radius problem layered into a “Total Recall” identity crisis.

Looking at it realistically, there are only two likely explanations for how Liam acquired his peculiar affliction: secret science experiment or supernatural/otherworldly origin.  “Radius” picks a path that may have many muttering, “that’s it?”  The thing about that though, is writers/directors Caroline Labreche and Steeve Leonard aren’t interested in the science part of their fiction to the extent others might be.  Their fable concerns itself with the behavior of those in the predicament’s path, which is why “Radius” reads as an intimate experience.  This in turn means those interested in more action or explanation may encounter mild disappointment instead.

Whatever its drawbacks, “Radius” retains a fascinatingly original springboard pushing it well above average in the realm of scaled down sci-fi.  Labreche and Leonard encounter several stutters, such as a strange obsession with repeatedly delivering exposition at convenient moments via radio or TV news bulletins, though their movie’s thematic maturity sharpens “Radius” with an edge of intelligent introspection.  Maybe it could have been a mountain, but the molehill builds high enough to see its peak still capped with satisfying entertainment.

Review Score:  60

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