Review: Big Sky

Bella Thorne plays the seriously agoraphobic daughter of slightly trashy but loving mother Kyra Sedgwick. She and her mother are about to head off to a treatment facility, in a van with a special cage (!) for Thorne in the boot, to help with her fears of open spaces. There’s a couple of other patients being transported as well, including klepto Jodi Lynn Thomas. Unfortunately, on the way there, the van is set-upon by two masked men (half-brothers, played by Frank Grillo and Aaron Tveit) who kill pretty much all of the passengers, and leaving Sedgwick severely wounded. The crims were unaware of Thorne’s location, and eventually she emerges to witness the aftermath, and see that her mother is likely very close to dying unless she can go and get help. Being afraid of wide open spaces and being that they’re in the middle of the American desert, this is a bit of a pickle for Thorne to be put in.

 

The kind of film that initially intrigues you because you’re not sure where it’s going, but you end up frustrated and disappointed when it gets there. All that build up and not only does it end in rushed fashion, but very little is explained. This 2015 genre flick from director Jorge Michael Grau (who directed the “I is for Ingrown” segment of “The ABCs of Death” anthology film) and screenwriter Evan M. Wiener (his second screenwriting credit) has a good movie somewhere inside of it, but it’s not quite there on the screen I’m afraid.

 

Is it silly as hell? Well, there’s an agoraphobic being kept in the trunk of a car, so yeah it’s silly as fuck. But that’s not the problem. As I said, it starts out intriguingly by not really giving you any indication of what it’s about or where it’s headed. That’s not frustrating, it keeps you guessing. However, I’m not sure if I should praise the film for an intriguing start when it ultimately doesn’t build on that start. It also doesn’t help that the main character’s agoraphobia is set up as such a big stumbling block, only to be worked around far too easily and quickly. That’s a shame, because having an agoraphobic for the main character of a thriller is a pretty intriguing idea full of tense possibilities that are never really played with. I get that the film is supposed to be about Thorne’s character overcoming her fears, but you can’t just set up a plot and not fully explain it. We get very scant, unsatisfactory detail. Ultimately, I’ll give the film a fairly decent rating, because the journey (or at least most of it) is probably more important than the destination. It really only falls apart in the last 15 minutes.

 

Bella Thorne gives a thoroughly amateurish performance in the lead, as does Aaron Tveit in support as a supposedly unstable young man, but Tveit underplays it so badly you barely notice. Was he even trying? Poor Kyra Sedgwick doesn’t have much to do here except periodically struggle to not bleed to death. The bizarro thing is that most people who get shot would tear off a piece of clothing to cover the wound and stop the bleeding. Sedgwick spends her time making origami swans. Yet, when Thorne gets a boo-boo on her owie, she indeed does what I suggest with the wound, with significantly less bleeding. That sure makes sense. On the plus side, Frank Grillo is a sturdy presence, doing his best to make up for Tveit’s completely flat performance.

 

A fascinatingly guarded approach to plotting early on, eventually falls in a heap as there’s ultimately not much going on here, and not much of it is terribly well-explained. The performances are variable, and the film has a lot more promise than it delivers. The finale is woefully rushed, and I’m still not sure what the basic scheme was all about. It’s kind of watchable, but that’s all, and it shouldn’t have been the case.

 

Rating: C+