Over the past week, Netflix released a reboot of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” while the Foo Fighters hit movie theaters for the supernatural horror comedy “Studio 666.”
If neither sounds up your alley, check out 20th Century Studios’ “No Exit,” which drops on Hulu on Friday, featuring a self-contained premise fitting for a pandemic and providing just enough thrills for predictable popcorn entertainment as it travels familiar genre ground.
Based on a novel by Taylor Adams, the film follows a college student named Darby, who leaves her drug rehab center to visit her dying mom in the hospital. When a blizzard strikes, she becomes stranded at an isolated highway rest stop in the mountains, only to discover a kidnapped child hidden in the van of one of the travelers. Who is the culprit?
Lead actress Havana Rose Liu is having a breakout month in February of 2022, having just played the dead older sister in flashbacks in “The Sky is Everywhere” on Apple TV+. “No Exit” is a much heavier lift, initially portraying grief and addiction, then turning her facial expressions into breath-holding terror before wincing in gritty pain through bloody torment.
Surrounding her is a supporting cast led by Dennis Haysbert (“Major League”) as a war veteran providing some assurance (or is it insurance?). We also get an aging housemaid in Dale Dickey (“Hell or High Water”), a suspicious creeper in David Rysdahl (“Nine Days”) and a potential love interest in Danny Ramirez (“The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”).
The idea of five characters trapped at a highway rest stop makes for a claustrophobic chamber piece with no WiFi. New Zealand stands in for the Rockies for a remote setting like John Hyams’ “Alone” (2020) with a bit of John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982) without the supernatural or Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” (2015) minus the western vibe.
Instead, we get a straight-up whodunnit, symbolized by a poker game filled with plenty of dialogue double meanings as characters try to bluff each other and predict each other’s “tells.” It’s clear they’re talking about a card game, but Darby simultaneously studies their every move to see which one of these weary travelers might actually be a child abductor.
The only problem is that the whodunnit only lasts for about 30 minutes, as the culprit is quickly revealed at the end of Act One. What we thought was a red herring during the card game turns out to be exactly the perpetrator we expected, which is a bit of a letdown.
Don’t worry. There are other twists along the way that you won’t see coming as the script continues to peel back its heavily-plotted onion. Thanks to the source novel, screenwriters Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Instead, they add touches of popcorn delight after co-writing Marvel’s “Ant-Man and The Wasp” (2018).
Director Damien Power shows creative flourishes like flashing police lights, hands slapping against foggy windows, villains appearing in car mirrors, American flags waving on vehicles, overhead tracking shots of bloody trails in the snow, transitions from a snowy mountain to an indoor painting, even Christ imagery like Brian DePalma’s “Carrie” (1976).
By the end, it’s bizarre that snorting cocaine becomes the heroine’s saving grace. It’s not a matter of “just say no” moralizing, but it feels odd structurally for her character arc to give into her personal flaw when the film’s bookends are her overcoming addiction at a rehab center. Maybe the idea is that she has to give into it one last time in order to overcome it?
Either way, the thrill ride lasts a brisk 90 minutes, so it’s a fun way to spend a Friday night.
Fire up some popcorn and go for it.
