Frank (Aaron Lohr) takes his eight months pregnant wife Julia (Judy
Maier) on a trip to the country - on her insistance, I might want to add
-, but then her contractions seem to set in, and Frank turns their car around,
but loses control over it when taking a shortcut, and ... when the two
come to, they sit in a their wrecked off the road and are stuck. It seems that
someone is watching them, and it might be a serial rapist, but Frank and
Julia do nothing to better their situation for two whole days, all they do
is talk to pass the time ... and then Julia's water breaks, Frank cuts off
his arm to get out of the car - he has dropped his cellphone outside on day one -
and then all of a sudden, Frank's estranged and borderline mad brother
Chuck (Jonathan Cherry) shows up, tortures both of them for a bit, then
offers to save at least Julia and the unborn if she blows him right then
and there. She agrees to it, but then bites off his penis and stabs him.
Frank in the meantime has made it to his cellphone and calls an ambulance,
then he and his brother get into a fight, in which they not only kill each
other but also injure Julia ... and when the ambulance finally arrives,
they wonder whom to save, Julia or her baby ...
A film that mostly consists of people being trapped in a
confined space needs a few things to really work: Narrative build-up,
brilliant dialogue, interesting characters, excellent actors, suspense
scenes aplenty, an imaginative directorial approach, and maybe even a good
ending to the story (though that's actually least important). The Wreck
unfortunately has none of that. Sure it's ok in some departments (the
actors are decent yet far from excellent, the directorial effort is at
least promising) if not as good as it should have been, but it totally
fails in other departments: The characters are pale at best, the dialogue
is banal, there is no real suspense here ... but worst of all, the
narrative buildup totally sucks. So ok, there is this couple trapped in
their car, and for two days, they're just chatting away and do virtually nothing
to better their situation. Now what's that all about? If you have two days
time and one of you is pregnant, you could get out of a car using a nail
file, right? I mean, do these two guys totally fail to see the graveness
of their situation, or do they think "hey, we wanted to go to the
country anyways, and now we're in the country, so what's the big deal
about being stuck in a car?" No disrespect, but doesn't such
stupidity deserve to die? If you didn't get what I was saying: Not the
worst film ever, by far not, but don't watch it!
|