‘Lookout’ Review: An Aimless Indie Horror That Defies Narrative Convention and Common Sense
The indie horror space is great for discovering a diamond in the rough. I’ve come across many competently rendered cinematic offerings while sifting through low-budget VOD releases. As it turns out, however, Stefan Colson’s Lookout is not one of those films. Lookout is a horror/sci-fi hybrid that starts off poorly and only gets progressively worse. The film gets just enough right that the distributor was able to craft a serviceable trailer, which mildly piqued my curiosity. Sadly, there’s not enough substance here to sustain the film’s 80-minute runtime. The picture goes off the rails thanks to two-dimensional characters, sluggish pacing, stiff acting, and myriad other challenges.
The proceedings are further hindered by an unpolished screenplay. Writer Brandon Cahela dreams up a scenario where forest ranger Melissa (Meghan Carrasquillo) willingly volunteers to spend a month in a fire watchtower to escape her ex and piece her life back together. While she’s on duty, some inexplicable developments involving magical rocks and an enigmatic gooey substance unfold. All the while, Melissa learns less than nothing about herself and never finds the clarity she was seeking when she signed up for the assignment.
I’d like to say that Melissa has an anticlimactic arc, but that terminology implies that the stopping point is different from the starting point. Instead of an arc, her story consists of a series of overused narrative tropes that are introduced and subsequently abandoned. When all is said and done, Melissa is precisely where she started. No lessons learned. No personal growth. Just stagnation.
I spent the first two-thirds of the film waiting for something, anything, to happen. Yet, absolutely nothing does. The slow-burn approach can prove remarkably effective if we spend time getting to know the characters and investing in their plight. However, with no real journey to speak of, I came away more than a little perplexed.
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For a while, I held out hope that there might be some meaningful development stemming from Melissa’s relationship with her cantankerous supervisor (Jim Round), but that element is never utilized in a meaningful way. Her boss doesn’t function as a proper villain, and he never helps push Melissa’s nonexistent arc forward. He’s just a cranky archetype who brings nothing to the table and eventually fades into the background when the actual threat presents. The final interaction between the protagonist and her superior reveals that neither one has grown in any identifiable way. Both have just stayed in existential limbo.
To stage such a long buildup with no payoff is incomprehensible. But it’s not just the character arcs that are lacking. The antagonistic element is also badly mishandled. The threat isn’t fully introduced until roughly two-thirds of the way through the film. When it finally does appear, the execution is haphazard and aimless. Though we ultimately meet a character who is revealed as antagonistic, we never learn anything beyond the loosely rendered notion that he’s keen on the magical rocks, which yield some vague, superhuman powers to the beholder.
I’ve said many times before that less is more, and I stand by that. However, it’s important to note that writers must give the viewer something to hang onto. Here, we’re left watching woefully underdeveloped characters run around the woods in pursuit of mystical gravel while a gooey substance also plays a largely unexplained role in the process.
I’d like to say that the central evil adds something to the equation, but I’d be lying. When the rock-related action finally ramps up, we see even more flaws come to the surface. At this point, rather than just bad writing, we are faced with a series of additional issues. The fight scenes and editing each prove problematic. When bouts of fisticuffs break out and the blows land, it looks like playacting. The choreography is rough on its own, but the editing doesn’t do it any favors. In scenes where the action should have cut on impact, the camera lingers too long, making the dust-ups look particularly unrealistic.
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I was also caught off guard by the apparent lack of concern for continuity. For instance, in the third act, Melissa injures her foot so badly that she doesn’t think she can walk. Yet, mere moments later, she’s running through the woods at a steady pace, with barely so much as a limp to show for the debilitating injury that she sustained moments prior. Sadly, that’s not the only gap in logic.
Despite all the film’s shortcomings, I can at least say that it gets a few things right on a technical level. The cinematography is serviceable; the color grading is nicely done for an indie effort; and the lighting is effectively staged, giving the picture a glossy, inviting sheen.
On the whole, the technical wins do little to offset the shoddy screenplay, underdeveloped characters, and continuity challenges. If you’re undeterred and curious to make up your own mind about Lookout, you can catch the film on VOD now.
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Lookout
Summary
‘Lookout’ is aimless, meandering, and unpolished thanks to a script that feels largely unfinished.
Categorized: Reviews
