No Exit

There's a lot of upsides to watching tonnes of movies but one of the unspoken downsides is recognising an actor you know will turn out to be villainous. Sometimes it's fun to be ahead of the curve when watching with others but mostly it just ruins the twists and turns a film like No Exit will throw at you. This is no reflection on No Exit of course, I'm just being a moany bastard. No Exit is pretty good.

Darby Thorne (Havana Rose Liu) is having a rough time. Her umpteenth visit to rehab isn't working out too well and when she finds out her mother is in hospital she wants out but leaving court ordered counselling is easier said than done. She does it anyway with a well handed screwdriver and a stolen car and before long she's driving through snowstorms heading towards Salt Lake City. A blizzard forces her to take shelter in a park visiting center and inside are Ash (Danny Ramirez), Lars (David Rysdahl), and a married couple called Ed (Dennis Haysbert) and Sandi (Dale Dickey), all in the same predicament as her. Just before she settles in for a long cold night she takes one final trip outside to try in vain to make a phonecall and discovers something unsettling inside one of the vans parked nearby.

You can tell straight away No Exit was filmed during the Covid-19 pandemic. A small cast, a simple premise, the vast majority of the story taking place in one location. That doesn't stop it from being an entertaining watch and despite it's tiny cast it will still keep you guessing throughout it's running time (if you haven't watched too many films that this). It's also the kind of movie that requires a large suspension of disbelief and one late plot plot is in awfully bad taste (you'll know it when you see it) but if you enjoy your Hitchcockian chamber pieces with a side order of bloody violence No Exit will more than likely hit the spot for you.

No Exit's got a strong heroine, nasty baddies, some vicious retribution and a gripping story and it's all told in under 95 minutes. What's not to enjoy?