Downrange TIFF Review: Ryuhei Kitamura’s Latest Is an Overly Long But Entertaining Gorefest
Jonathan Barkan
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Starring Kelly Connaire, Stephanie Pearson, Rod Hernandez-Farella, Anthony Kirlew, Alexa Yeames, Jason Tobias, Aion Boyd
Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura
More and more these days, we’re seeing single location horror/thriller films. In theory, it makes 100% sense. They’re cheaper, production doesn’t have to move around a lot or come up with new set designs, and the viewers find themselves becoming comfortable and intimate with the setting. That being said, single locations films have the difficulty of constantly finding ways to make their environment interesting and engaging, which is no easy task.
Enter Downrange, the latest from Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus, The Midnight Meat Train). A film about six adults – the majority of whom are new acquaintances – who get stranded on the side of the road when their tire explodes only to then find themselves the target of a sniper, whose goal is to pick them off one-by-one. Our protagonists must utilize the resources immediately around them in order to find a way to survive their terrifying ordeal. But how do you outlast someone who has patience to spare?
In terms of pacing, the film gets going right away. The tire exploding occurs within the first few frames and, after they stop on the side of the road. The rest of the film, unfortunately, suffers from overly long sequences that draw away from whatever tension there might be. In films like this, a kill is not what creates tension, it’s the atmosphere of being hunted. Sadly, the film elects to have the sniper act as though he’s shooting fish in a barrel, so why move? This is instead of making him mobile and thereby keeping the protagonists, and the viewers, on their toes. As a result, the protagonists spend much of the film sitting on the side of the truck away from the sniper, a location that quickly becomes uninteresting.
After the aforementioned tire explosion, we immediately begin to get some character exposition, all of which is instantly forgettable and laughably bland. There are six main characters to this film and by the time the credits began to roll I had forgotten the majority of them, including the few who drew the majority of the movie’s focus.
Alright, so the movie had characters that I didn’t care about in the slightest. So what, right? That wouldn’t be such a problem if the film were tense and exciting, which is also where it has serious issues. At no point did I find myself on the edge of my seat, desperate to see what would happen. Instead, I watched nonchalantly as these people were shot in wonderful and grotesque explosions of viscera and flesh that will satisfy any gorehound.
Coming back to the single-location aspect, the film never strays, electing to give it some differentiation with the majority of the film taking place in the day and the climactic third act taking place at night. Stranding these people on the side of the road isn’t a bad idea but it’s clear that not enough thought was put into what they could utilize around them to move the story along. What we’re left with is Rod Hernandez-Farella banging his head against the side of the car a lot, Stephanie Pearson offering generic “army brat” expertise, or Kelly Connaire doing…not all that much. A hefty round of editing could take this 90-minute film to a lean 75/80 minutes that would’ve helped it tremendously.
Downrange isn’t a terrible movie, to be certain. It’s well-made, the gore is wickedly over-the-top, and genre icon Graham Skipper (The Mind’s Eye, Beyond the Gates, Almost Human) has a fun but brief appearance. The lack of interesting character development makes it totally okay to find meaningless entertainment in the slaughter of these characters. However, the film simply suffers from poor pacing, bad editing, and a ridiculous ending that is so implausible that it’s actually laughable.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
