SPOILER: This was a very weird movie, in part because it was either over-the-top wildly unrealistic with its depiction of the young couple, or disturbingly painfully 100% realistic with its depiction. Perhaps the unusualness of seeing an abusive relationship portrayed in a film or TV show with such non-physical, non-overt malice completely threw me off. Maybe it helps to identify with the wife Molly in these sorts of circumstances, but my own life experiences (perhaps thankfully) have not caused me to become involved in this sort of unhappy relationship. As well, given this is a 1 hour 18 minute movie, there's not enough time to build up the sort of normality of their relationship, and it comes across as rather brutally shocking at times.
The film is about a young couple, Molly and Roger, who end up getting stranded out in the desert during a blizzard. This happens after our introduction to their relationship, in which Molly walks in on a minor drug deal occurring in a public bathroom and gets frightened out by the dealer. Roger confronts her over her odd demeanor afterwards, then gets up to go confront the dealer despite her protests. The dealer is snarky and a bit of a jerk, but nowhere near being in any way threatening or violent, yet Roger displays his very first psychopathic tendencies by inexplicably attacking the drug dealer, then getting his own ass beat down. The dealer, despite his brusque nature, is an adult and walks away without further harming Roger, only for Roger to jump up behind him and savagely maul him, possibly killing him.
Later on, they get stuck in the desert, and Roger proceeds to berate her endlessly, blaming her for the car getting stuck, and repeatedly bullying her as they try to get out of the snow. These moments of discomfort and tension are briefly defused by minor moments of affection and playfulness between the two, which only makes the further abuse Roger heaps upon Molly more disturbing to watch. He never outright hits her or verbally abuses her, but instead does little things like refuse to turn on the car engine so they can run the heat so she can keep warm, leading to a point where he locks her out of the car and just stares at her emptily while she yells at him to let her in, only breaking his façade and opening the door when she threatens to smash the window in with a rock. Another thing he does is discover she has hidden away a pack of trail mix and was secretly eating it. He proceeds to take it from her and say he will keep it all for himself. Then, after having repeatedly refused to turn on the car for her to use the heat in order to save gas, he comes up with a half-baked idea to siphon gas out of the car and burn their excess clothes to make a signal fire to be seen from the sky.
At this point, the abuse becomes physical, and there's almost a sense of relief that it comes out into the open in the form of physical violence, because it just feels so much more honest than the subtle bullying and constant berating that could have indeed caused her physical harm in the form of hypothermia.
This escalates to a point where he flat-out says he will wait for her to starve to death, before eating her, and then walking however many miles it takes to get back to the main road or to a town or something. This sets her off and she leaves the car and proceeds to basically do just that. Thankfully for her, she finds a cabin with electricity, food, and water. Much like an actual battered wife, she returns for her abusive husband. This culminates into the plot described "chilling climax" which, after the subtle brutality we've gone through leading up to it, comes across as almost a pleasant relief.
This was overall a very weird film in this regards. Billed as a survival-horror type film, it ends up playing out more like a disturbingly common scenario (an abusive relationship) placed in an unusual, though entirely plausible setting. It was very taut and well executed in that regard, but comes across as somewhat difficult to go through.
The film is about a young couple, Molly and Roger, who end up getting stranded out in the desert during a blizzard. This happens after our introduction to their relationship, in which Molly walks in on a minor drug deal occurring in a public bathroom and gets frightened out by the dealer. Roger confronts her over her odd demeanor afterwards, then gets up to go confront the dealer despite her protests. The dealer is snarky and a bit of a jerk, but nowhere near being in any way threatening or violent, yet Roger displays his very first psychopathic tendencies by inexplicably attacking the drug dealer, then getting his own ass beat down. The dealer, despite his brusque nature, is an adult and walks away without further harming Roger, only for Roger to jump up behind him and savagely maul him, possibly killing him.
Later on, they get stuck in the desert, and Roger proceeds to berate her endlessly, blaming her for the car getting stuck, and repeatedly bullying her as they try to get out of the snow. These moments of discomfort and tension are briefly defused by minor moments of affection and playfulness between the two, which only makes the further abuse Roger heaps upon Molly more disturbing to watch. He never outright hits her or verbally abuses her, but instead does little things like refuse to turn on the car engine so they can run the heat so she can keep warm, leading to a point where he locks her out of the car and just stares at her emptily while she yells at him to let her in, only breaking his façade and opening the door when she threatens to smash the window in with a rock. Another thing he does is discover she has hidden away a pack of trail mix and was secretly eating it. He proceeds to take it from her and say he will keep it all for himself. Then, after having repeatedly refused to turn on the car for her to use the heat in order to save gas, he comes up with a half-baked idea to siphon gas out of the car and burn their excess clothes to make a signal fire to be seen from the sky.
At this point, the abuse becomes physical, and there's almost a sense of relief that it comes out into the open in the form of physical violence, because it just feels so much more honest than the subtle bullying and constant berating that could have indeed caused her physical harm in the form of hypothermia.
This escalates to a point where he flat-out says he will wait for her to starve to death, before eating her, and then walking however many miles it takes to get back to the main road or to a town or something. This sets her off and she leaves the car and proceeds to basically do just that. Thankfully for her, she finds a cabin with electricity, food, and water. Much like an actual battered wife, she returns for her abusive husband. This culminates into the plot described "chilling climax" which, after the subtle brutality we've gone through leading up to it, comes across as almost a pleasant relief.
This was overall a very weird film in this regards. Billed as a survival-horror type film, it ends up playing out more like a disturbingly common scenario (an abusive relationship) placed in an unusual, though entirely plausible setting. It was very taut and well executed in that regard, but comes across as somewhat difficult to go through.
