Southbound (2015 film)

Southbound

Theatrical release poster
Directed by
Produced by
  • Brad Miska
  • Roxanne Benjamin
  • Radio Silence
  • Greg Newman
  • Chris Harding
Written by
  • Matt Bettinelli-Olpin (The Way Out & The Way In)
  • Roxanne Benjamin (Siren)
  • Susan Burke (Siren)
  • David Bruckner (The Accident)
  • Patrick Horvath (Jailbreak)
  • Dallas Hallam (Jailbreak)
Starring see below
Music by The Gifted
Cinematography
  • Tyler Gillett
  • Tarin Anderson
  • Alexandre Naufel
  • Andrew Shulkind
Edited by
  • Matt Bettinelli-Olpin
  • Tyler Gillett
  • Jason Eisner
  • Roxanne Benjamin
  • David Bruckner
  • Patrick Horvath
Production
company
Willowbrook Regent Films
Distributed by The Orchard
Release dates
Running time
 89 minutes[1]
Country United States
Language English
Box office $23,665[2]

Southbound is a 2015 American anthology horror/science fiction/thriller film directed by Radio Silence, Roxanne Benjamin, David Bruckner, and Patrick Horvath. The film is produced by Brad Miska and had its world premiere at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival on September 16, 2015. It was released theatrically on February 5, 2016 in a limited release.[3]

Plot

Five interlocking tales of terror follow the fates of a group of weary travellers who confront their worst nightmares and darkest secrets on a desolate stretch of desert highway.

The film unfolds in an endless loop that plays out chronologically over the course of one never-ending day.

The Way Out

Mitch and Jack (Chad Villella and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin) are on the run from enigmatic floating creatures. Mitch looks at a photograph of his daughter Katherine as they drive down a nameless highway, clearly he is filled with remorse. In the desert, Mitch sees the creatures stalking them but does not tell Jack. At a creepy gas station, Carnival of Souls is on the TV and weird stuff happens to the men as the creatures stalk them from afar. Mitch and Jack try to escape but they keep pulling into the same gas station and cannot get away. The creatures close in on them as Jack tries to leave and is killed. But Mitch will not leave because he thinks he deserves this fate so instead of running like Jack he follows the creatures as they lure him to a nearby motel room. He enters room 6255 and inside he inexplicably finds himself in a house. But oddly, the house is familiar to him. He stares at something on the table that is not shown and then he hears disembodied giggles. He follows the sounds and finds his daughter Katherine as an apparition. She repeatedly begs him to help her and cryptically says "Make him stop." But when Mitch tries to help, no matter how close he gets to Katherine he can never catch her. Mitch gets trapped in the hallway of the house forever tormented by the regret he was not able to help his daughter, while the creature oversees his punishment. As the camera pulls out we see that he was looking at a mask of an old man on the table.[4]

Siren

The camera follows the motel maid to another room where it finds Sadie, Ava and Kim (Fabianne Therese, Hannah Marks and Nathalie Love). They are in a band named The White Tights that had a fourth member named Alex who died. When their van breaks down they are picked up by a friendly yet odd couple (Susan Burke and Davey Johnson), who take them to their house. In the backseat of their car, Sadie sees a bear trap. At the house, in the middle of nowhere, the band is shown to their room when Sadie thinks the woman mentions their dead friend Alex. At dinner with the Kensingtons (Anessa Ramsey and Dana Gould), who live nearby and have twin sons, they are served a meat loaf-type meal but Sadie does not eat it because she is vegetarian. After dinner, Kim blames Sadie for Alex's death. Ava and Kim suddenly begin vomiting a black substance, which is the color of the meat they had eaten. Sadie gets help and the people in the house give Ava and Kim a white medicine to drink. Sadie is annoyed at her friends for acting strangely and tries to get them to leave but they refuse. In the bathroom, she looks at old pictures of Alex on her phone and gets sad. That night Sadie has a dream about Alex getting hit by a car. When she wakes up, Ava and Kim are gone. She finds them outside around a fire pit where the cult are transforming them. They hear Sadie watching and chase her. Sadie gets stuck in one of their bear traps but escapes and hides in a cabin where she sees Alex's apparition who cryptically tells her that "Now we can all be together." Sadie is scared and she runs into the desert. She runs into the road and one of the enigmatic floating creatures lurks behind her.[4]

The Accident

Lucas (Mather Zickel) is driving on the same nameless highway, talking to his wife Claire on the phone, when he hits Sadie who runs into the road looking for help. Sadie is hurt badly and might not make it. Stuck in the middle of nowhere without GPS, he calls 911 and the dispatcher mysteriously knows Lucas's name. A certified EMT gets on the line to help. The voices of the dispatcher and the EMPT lure Lucas to a nearby hospital. But the hospital is abandoned and Carnival of Souls is again playing on the television. Lucas searches the hospital for help but cannot find anyone and he has to perform lifesaving surgery on Sadie himself while the dispatcher talks him through the procedure. When the surgery becomes intense a doctor joins the call to walk Lucas through what he has to do. This does not go well and Sadie dies. The voices laugh at Lucas, who is distraught. He tries to escape the hospital but finds out that he is trapped and there is no way out. Shortly after, his phone rings and it is the voices again. They tell him to talk about what happened and he says "I don't deserve this." They surprisingly agree and cryptically tell him he can leave. They mysteriously provide him with access to new clothes and a new car so it will be as though nothing happened. Lucas is concerned and unsure if they are tricking him again and asks them if he needs to worry about what happened. They tell him he doesn't. One of the enigmatic floating creatures watches him drives past a bar and gets back on the nameless highway.[4]

Jailbreak

The dispatcher who was talking to Lucas (Maria Olsen) is on an old payphone and watches Lucas drive away. The camera follows her into a bar named The Trap and across the parking lot Danny (David Yow) gets out of his car. Inside the dive bar, a poster for The White Tights is shown that was supposed to happen that night. The locals debate closing the door all the way when Danny breaks in with a shotgun. Everyone thinks it is a robbery but he explains that he's searching for his sister, Jessie. Danny seems to know the place and he shoots one of the locals who turns out to be a demon (Tyler Tuione). Danny escapes with the bartender (Matt Peters), who takes him to the back of Freez'n Over where the bartender warns him to leave before it's too late. There are demons Danny cannot see closing in on him as the bartender leads him through a secret entrance into a hidden room. Inside the room, he finds his sister. He has been searching for her for ten years and tells her that he has come to save her from this purgatory world. But she tells him that she is there by choice. Danny kills the bartender and kidnaps his sister, determined to leave with her. The local creatures chase Danny as he drives off of the nameless highway into a dangerous and forbidden area. Jessie begs him to stop and they stop in the middle of nowhere. She tells him that she killed their parents and she deserves to live in purgatory and that it's what she wants. Danny does not want to believe her but he is taken by the demons and Jessie drives away and leaves him. She smiles and turns on the radio as she drives past one of the enigmatic floating creatures.[4]

The Way In

Jem (Hassie Harrison) exits the bathroom at Freez'n Over and sees Jessie walk back to the secret door. Jem notices her and then meets her parents, Cait and Daryl (Kate Beahan and Gerald Downey), to finish their food. Jem is going to college and this is their last weekend together before she leaves. As they leave Freez'n Over someone in the parking lot watches them get into their car and drive to the house they are vacationing at. They are about to have dinner when three masked men break into their vacation house. Daryl and Cait are caught while Jem hides. But Daryl realizes that he knows who the men are and what they want, he begs them to spare his family. One of the men tells Cait what Daryl did and she is astonished at her husband's secret. The same man then says "eye for an eye" and kills her in front of her husband. But then someone tries to start the family car and one of the men goes to inspect where he is attacked by Jem. Surprisingly, the other men tell her to leave. She runs away and they kill Daryl. As he is dying, the man in the mask holds up the photograph of Katherine that Mitch was looking at in The Way Out to be the last thing he ever sees (implying that Daryl was the him Katherine was asking Mitch to stop when he could not catch her). After Daryl is dead, they remove their masks and they are recognizable as Mitch and Jack. But as they are leaving, they pick up the third man who never takes off his mask, Shane (Damion Stephens), when Jem returns and fights back. She injures them badly but when she’s about to escape, Mitch accidentally kills her. The men feel guilty because they went too far, but it's too late. Outside, the ground to hell opens up as the enigmatic floating creatures from below come through the dead bodies to drag the intruders from purgatory down to hell. The men try to escape but Shane is dragged down by the tentacles from hell. Mitch and Jack drive away.

The film ends where it began, with a scene of Mitch and Jack on the run, to fully reveal that the characters, unaware that they are living in an endless loop of purgatory, are doomed to repeat their sins until they make the right choices and will be freed or will continue to make the wrong choices and will be taken to hell by the enigmatic floating creatures who oversee purgatory.[4]

Cast

Production

Producers Brad Miska and Radio Silence began working together in 2014 to create the concept as Miska brought on Benjamin, Bruckner, and Horvath to fill out the other director roles.[5][6]

Pre-production began in shortly thereafter and the filmmakers (most of whom had previously worked together on V/H/S) collaborated throughout the process.[7]

Principal photography took place in various locations throughout the greater Los Angeles area and the Mojave Desert in 2015, including Twentynine Palms and Amboy.[8][9]

An festival version of the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 16, 2015 and the final cut was released theatrically on February 5, 2016 in a limited release.[10]

Music

The score was composed and recorded by The Gifted. The film features songs by Mickey Western, Link 80, Barbara Paul, The-Front, Lay Low, Patrick Horvath, Ben Lovett with Ryan Levine, Nick Africano, the Soft White Sixties and the Atom Age.[11]

Hidden meanings

There are numerous allusions to the film's alternate meanings hidden throughout the segments.[12][13]

These allusions include the clearly visible bullet wound on Mitch; the blood splatter on the motel wall: bullet holes that mysteriously appear after Mitch becomes trapped in the motel; the implication that the ancillary characters have all participated in the situations before; the same dispatch voice heard every time a character calls 911; the inference that Danny has transcended the physical world to find his sister; the use of Carnival of Souls (the films share similar themes and storylines); the clerk at the truck stop is named "Sutter" which is an allusion to "Sutter Kane" from John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, another film with similar themes; mirrored dialogue, scenes and images throughout; the creatures being visible in each story; elements of the production design that include the word "fear" visible in the magazine Sutter is reading; the flyer for The White Tights in the Jailbreak segment, Jack's "Only God Can Judge Me" tattoo, and the name of the bar that Danny breaks into: "The Trap".[6]

Additionally, The Way Out and The Way In have numerous connective visual and audible cues throughout to establish the narrative and physical connection between stories that create the film's never-ending loop. These include 1) the truck from the first segment is visible in the "Freez'n Over" parking lot at the beginning of the last segment; 2) the house is the same in both segments and many of the same shots are used, including of the decorative lights outside and when the daughter walks down the same hallway where Mitch gets trapped; 3) in the first segment, the creatures stalk Mitch and Jack in the exact same fashion that Mitch and Jack stalk the family in the last segment, first from afar before closing in; 4) Jack is grabbed by the creature in the bathroom with a t-shirt, which is what he kills Cait with in the last segment; 5) the shaking in Roy's Cafe is the sound made when the ground opens up in the last segment, inferring that these are the creatures below; 6) when Jack is killed by the creature, he dies in much the same way as Cait did when he suffocated her; 7) the knocks on the motel door that lure Mitch into the room are the same pattern as the knocks from outside the house in the last segment; 8) in the first segment, the motel room is numbered 6255 which is the same as the house's address in the last segment; 9) the mask that Mitch wears in The Way In is visible on the table in the last shot of The Way Out, as it is what he was looking at when he first heard his daughter giggle; 10) the songs "Don't Let the Party End" and "Goodbye, Goodbye" are used in both though different parts of the songs are played; 11) the DJ's voice-over (Larry Fessenden) is in both segments however the ending version has slightly different dialogue implying that the loop is not the same every time and that the characters have the option of making better choices with the possibility that they may be allowed to escape should they cease to make the same wrong choices time and time again.[6][14][10][15]

Release

The film had its world premiere at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival on September 16, 2015.[16] Shortly after, The Orchard acquired distribution rights to the film.[17] The film went onto screen at the AFI Fest,[18] Fantastic Fest,[19] and the Sitges Film Festival,[20] The film is scheduled to be released on February 5, 2016, in a limited release, prior to being released on video on demand on February 9, 2016.[10]

Reception

Southbound holds an 80% approval score on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 45 reviews and an average rating of 6.6/10. The site's consensus states: "Southbound doesn't entirely avoid the jarring shifts common to anthology films, but thanks to some thrilling twists and turns, this horror road movie is a surprisingly smooth ride."[21] Metacritic reports a 58 out of 100 rating based on 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[22]

The New York Times' Neil Genzlinger gave the film a positive review and wrote "Its five segments do what they're supposed to do—unsettle you—but as a bonus, they also leave you wanting more. These are fragments more than complete stories, and the incompleteness is its own kind of creepiness. The filmmakers aren't after tidy tales, neatly connected and concluded. They know that the human mind finds loose ends unnerving." Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times, who wrote that "It's one of the smartest and scariest movies in recent memory"[23][24] and Rolling Stone's David Ehrlich wrote that the movie was "Like episodes of Twilight Zone that a baked Rod Serling might have written after watching Carnival of Souls, these chapters are eerie to the extreme, and seedy enough to make you feel like you're watching something you were never meant to see. It gets under your skin because it knows there's nothing scarier than realizing that—no matter how far you drive—the evil in your rearview mirror is always closer than it appears."[25]

Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review: "The vignettes are cleverly interwoven by having situations or characters bleeding over from one to the next, and despite the multiple helmers and scripters involved the film boasts a strong stylistic consistency. Featuring fine performances by its ensemble...Southbound should well please genre fans nostalgic for the likes of Tales From the Crypt and Creepshow."[26] Nicolas Rapold of Film Comment wrote, "This anthology of five horror tales is the rare group effort without a dud, as it cruises through variations on the genre with style and confidence."[27] Todd Brown, founder and editor of Twitch Film, described the film as the "Twilight Zone for the indie horror generation."[28]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "SOUTHBOUND (18)". British Board of Film Classification. April 5, 2016. Retrieved April 5, 2016.
  2. ↑ "Southbound". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
  3. ↑ Townsend, Lauren. "Watch the First Seven Minutes of TIFF Horror Sensation 'Southbound'". IndieWire. Retrieved 20 January 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 http://darkskyfilms.com/southbound/
  5. ↑ "'Southbound' directors talk about their TIFF-screening horror film — exclusive image". Entertainment Weekly's EW.com. Retrieved 2016-03-07.
  6. 1 2 3 ""Southbound" Interview Pt.2 with Radio Silence". The Cinema Files. Retrieved March 2016.
  7. ↑ AFI Fest (2015-4-11) The AFI FEST Interview: SOUTHBOUND http://blog.afi.com/the-afi-fest-interview-southbound-director-roxanne-benjamin/
  8. ↑ Collis, Clark (2015-9-15) Entertainment Weekly http://www.ew.com/article/2015/09/15/tiff-2015-southbound
  9. ↑ Collis, Clark. "Watch the First Seven Minutes of Horror Anthology Southbound". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved January 21, 2016.
  10. 1 2 3 Townsend, Lauren. "Watch the First Seven Minutes of TIFF Horror Sensation 'Southbound'". IndieWire. Retrieved January 20, 2016.
  11. ↑ Radio Silence http://www.hiradiosilence.com/soundtracks/
  12. ↑ "We're the filmmakers and cast behind the movie Southbound, ASK US ANYTHING!". Reddit. Retrieved February 25, 2016.
  13. ↑ "Radio Silence Interview - Southbound". Quiet Earth. Retrieved February 10, 2016.
  14. ↑ "We're the filmmakers and cast behind the movie Southbound, ASK US ANYTHING!". Reddit. Retrieved February 25, 2016.
  15. ↑ "Radio Silence Interview - Southbound". Quiet Earth. Retrieved February 10, 2016.
  16. ↑ "Southbound". Tiff.net. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  17. ↑ McNary, Dave (October 8, 2015). "Horror Anthology ‘Southbound’ Bought by The Orchard for North America". Variety.com. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  18. ↑ "Southbound". Afi.com. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  19. ↑ "Southbound". FantasticFest.com. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  20. ↑ "Southbound". SitgesFilmFestival.com. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  21. ↑ "Southbound (2015)". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved March 9, 2016.
  22. ↑ "Southbound reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved April 6, 2016.
  23. ↑ Genzlinger, Neil (February 4, 2016). "'Review: ‘Southbound’ Tells Five Horror Tales, All Set on a Desolate Highway': Film Review". The New York Times. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  24. ↑ Roeper, Richard (February 4, 2016). "'SOUTHBOUND: FIVE TIME THE SCARES IN A MIND-BENDING HORROR ANTHOLOGY': Film Review". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  25. ↑ Ehrlich, David (February 4, 2016). "'Southbound': Film Review". Rolling Stone. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  26. ↑ Schek, Frank (November 3, 2015). "'Southbound': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  27. ↑ Rapold, Nicolas (2016-1-7) Film Comment http://www.filmcomment.com/article/southbound-review/
  28. ↑ Brown, Todd (2015-9-17) Twitch http://twitchfilm.com/2015/09/tiff-2015-review-southbound-delivers-equal-parts-serling-and-splatter.html

External links

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