Walk Away (2020)

Movie: Walk Away (2020), directed by Jason Dean and Matthew Nash

Watched on: Amazon Prime

Ran: 8.34 miles, 8’46”/mile, 01:13:10 (recovery run)

 

First off, lemme just say that this is not going to be most people’s choice for a running flick. It’s slow-paced psychological horror that meanders into philosophizing. There is little to get your heart rate up. The deaths are few and not especially graphic. That said, it had a fairly original premise and a fresh approach that kept me involved for its whole 90ish-minute run time. Also, its claustrophobia hits a little too close to the home we’re all still stuck inside. That’s right, this may not be the pandemic lockdown parable we deserved, but we got it anyway. 

 

Here’s the elevator pitch: picture Groundhog Day but horror, and swap in a geographical trap for the temporal one. Once these five hip young things on vacation (the women do yoga! One of the guys has a man-bun! One of them is a social media addict! etc. etc. etc.) make their way to the perfect cabin in the woods, it’s not long before one of them goes wandering off in hopes of securing enough of a cellular signal to Instagram Photophast the pics she snapped of her delightful organic barbecue plate. But as soon as she ventures just a little too far from the house, she’s —wait for it—teleported into its attic.

 

You would think even jaded movie stereotype millennials might be more than a little freaked out by this, but these five take it oddly in stride, and even systematically plot the limits around the house and experiment with what happens when someone’s already in the attic and another is teleported. The two dudes are even thrilled to discover that the fridge is mysteriously self-restocking, meaning free beer forever. Indeed, they only really seem to start to panic when someone points out that eventually they’re going to run out of toilet paper.

 

And so they can’t leave, they can’t communicate with the outside world, and eventually the passage of time wears upon their souls, they get on each other’s nerves, and a shot of a squeezed-out toothpaste tube and an empty toilet paper roll signal to the viewer that, yep, someone’s gonna die. (See what I mean about the pandemic?)

 

I liked this more than most people, it seems. It reminded me a bit of Cube, in the sense that a bunch of regular people are stuck together in a bizarre prison beyond their comprehension and the practical and philosophical questions of who’s behind it and why are ultimately pointless. (Also in that the ending is either deep, or just hoping people think it’s deep. The jury’s still out for me.) The conceit of a place that people can’t leave because whenever they try they always find themselves back where they started is not a unique one—see Southbound, Identity, The Final Girls, etc.—but it hasn’t been run into the ground as hard as many others. I would hazard to say this is distinctly unlike any other “cabin in the woods” movie you’ve seen, and if you’re like me, you’ve seen quite a few.

 

Also, it’s a pretty good-looking film. There are some beautiful sun-drenched idyllic shots of the cabin and its environs, as befits a story in which it’s the perfection of the cabin that is its poison. Yes, it has a certain art-school student film vibe to it, but I don’t necessarily mean that as a put-down. It’s true that sometimes the symbolism is a little on the nose—sooooo many shots of insects dying in spider webs, sooooo many books that wink broadly at the themes, e.g. Lord of the Flies and Sartre’s No Exit (which appeared onscreen about twenty minutes after I’d commented to myself “L’infer, c’est les autres”; they really didn’t need to hit us over the head with it). But there’s an earnestness to it all that’s ultimately charming.

 

If you’re a typical horror fan, you may detest this. If you have a soft spot for the oddballs and the slow-burns, though (did you like Cube, or did it infuriate you?), give it a whirl. No guarantees. And if you’re going to run while watching it, don’t expect it to spur you to any speed records; save it for a recovery run.