Reviews

I'm not sure why any established actor would agree to be in this film. It has no plot. Like beyond the plot gaps, it actually really doesn't have a plot. Spoilers below.

Joey is ambivalent about her boyfriend. He's a nice guy but it seems like she's just not in love with him. She goes on a rafting trip with her brother Walt, who is a guide. (This seems to be a reconciliation of sorts, although we never find out what they're reconciling over.) They take two female tourists along. Her brother surprises her by also inviting their childhood friend Trevor, who is just out of jail.

Joey doesn't seem to like Trevor. Trevor, on the other hand, seems to really want to reconnect. It's unclear what's happened between them in the past. You think you're going to find out but you never do.

It turns out, unbeknownst to Joey, Trevor went to jail to cover for Walt who was the one who actually committed the crime. (Which I guess was selling drugs.) Since then, Walt has reformed himself.

But Trevor during the trip tries to sexually assault one of the tourists? That's unclear. She says he pushed her, so we're left to assume he was about to assault her. That doesn't quite make sense because they're in the middle of their trip and there are 3 other people on the trip. Does Trevor think she won't start screaming? When he pushes her, she hits her head on a rock and is seriously injured, so they have to raft their way to the ranger station in the middle of the night. (Supposedly it takes two hours but it's already sunrise when they get there. They were all still awake around the campfire when it happened so I guess we're to believe they stayed up until 4 am?)

So maybe he once tried to assault Joey? If so, wouldn't she have told Walt this at some point while Joey was in jail? Or at least have refused to go on a rafting trip with him and two other women. Who knows?

On their way to the ranger station, Trevor overhears Joey tell Walt that the woman said Trevor pushed her. So Trevor doesn't want the ranger to call an airlift - instead he wants to drive the woman to the hospital - because supposedly this will mean no one reports him for assault. Trevor and the ranger fight, Trevor kills the ranger, and now Trevor has a gun. He takes everyone hostage so they can raft their way to the border and he can escape before he's reported. Obviously, he could've just made up some excuse to take the ranger's truck while they were waiting for the airlift. He probably would've made it past the border on his own while they were busy saving the woman. Instead, he does the hostage thing resulting in the woman's death.

So now things are even worse. Along the way, he kills one person after another out of desperation. But how did this guy suddenly become a cold-blooded killer? We never find out. Last we heard, this is a nice, innocent guy who went to prison for his friend Walt so that Walt could start a new life with his wife and baby (who are never mentioned before or since.) But I guess this innocent guy is also a rapist? I don't know!

Trevor never resolves anything with Walt. Walt never resolves anything with Joey. Joey never resolves anything with Trevor. There's even a side issue that one of the women has a controlling husband who makes her unhappy, and maybe she's going to have a romance with Walt (whom I guess is no longer married, idk.) But that goes nowhere, too.

Basically, Trevor kills a bunch of people including Walt, but Joey and the woman with the controlling husband survive. It's not only that nothing is resolved, it's also that we don't even know what any of the issues were in the first place.

The EMT asks Joey if there's anyone they should call and she says yes. So I guess the lesson learned here is that she loves her boyfriend after all. Why? Idk. What does surviving a deranged killer have to do with whether or not she breaks up with her boyfriend?

Like I said, there's no plot. What motivates any of these people? What is even going on?

If the film at least had interesting narrow escape twists, I might be able to forgive it. But their narrow escapes are all ridiculous. At one point, Joey leaves Walt to struggle for his life, then finally goes back for him after he's wounded. I thought for sure he'd start yelling at her about how she left him, and their whole past conflict would unfold. But he doesn't even seem to notice, let alone blame her.

It also might've been nice if they actually did have to struggle against the rapids to emerge triumphant. But they ditch the raft before that really happens, and then Trevor and Walt end up later falling into and dying in the water. Nobody overcomes anything.

There's even a weird knife thing Joey does to herself that seemingly is just there to show us a weird knife thing. It simply delays her rescue for a few minutes, that's all. If someone challenged you to write a screenplay where nothing is connected to anything else and no one knows why anyone does anything, this is the screenplay you would write.

This vague, paper-thin, preposterous plot is elevated by masterful suspense, moments of insightful dialogue, and expert cinematography.

The first time I watched it, I kept wondering why I found it so engaging. On its surface, it's just the same scene replayed over and over. But on a rewatch I realized that each scene contains its own surprise. It isn't exactly that the stakes keep getting higher or that the challenges keep mounting - it's that the stakes and challenges keep *changing.*

The inherent racism in a movie about a white family trying to escape a "fourth world" country is tempered by the introduction of many compassionate Asian characters, as well as some explanation about what motivated the bloody coup in the first place. (The country is laughably unnamed and generic, though.)

And within the confines of the sexist "husband/father knows best" trope, there's still a demonstration of true partnership between the parents. Rarely do they follow the wife/mother Annie's lead, but she is allowed to be heroic in a few important scenes. More than that, though, is the love and respect they show for each other throughout the film. (A lot of credit goes to the tremendously talented Lake Bell, who refuses to play this as a glamourous damsel in distress.)

Also, after the first serious scene, the children aren't played for the traditional doofus children vibes (where kids are presented as totally unaware of what's going on around them.) In fact, there's a scene where the littlest child is forced by their circumstances to urinate in her clothes. Her distress hits exactly the right note in dramatizing the family's desperation.

Honestly, it's a rewatchable film. Which is weird, because it really should've been terrible.