Under The Radar: Next Exit, Slash/Back, And Something In The Dirt Shined In November
(Welcome to Under the Radar, a column where we spotlight specific movies, shows, trends, performances, or scenes that caught our eye and deserved more attention ... but otherwise flew under the radar. In this edition: a road trip dramedy takes a turn for the supernatural in "Next Exit," "Slash/Back" puts an extraterrestrial twist on a cultural coming-of-age tale, and "Something in the Dirt" goes for broke.)
Halloween has come and gone, Thanksgiving is firmly in the rearview mirror, and holiday season stress is already in full swing ... with the end of the year looming right behind it. If you're anything like me, three major seasonal shifts coming right after the other (and, at times, even intersecting) in such short order — combined with the annual scourge of Daylight Saving Time here in the States, of course — is enough to induce a debilitating case of tonal whiplash. So with our internal body clocks in chaos and good taste in shambles (I'm sorry, turkey is gross and nobody needs to have Christmas decorations up before we even get to Thanksgiving!), what better place to turn for some solace than the movies?
Or, even better, why not steer directly into that skid by curating a list of underseen gems that all feel like sterling examples of tone- and genre-bending done right?
Now, at the risk of revealing how the sausage is made, I admit I didn't actually plan out this installment of "Under the Radar" with this particular theme in mind. But happy accident or not, it feels fortuitous that my three highlights from the last month all happened to play around with form and function to unforgettable results. With all that preamble out of the way, here are my personal picks for the movies worth catching up on from November.
Next Exit takes us on a ghostly road trip
You've seen the basic setup for this movie in countless low-budget indies before. Two cynics who can barely even stand the sight of each other are forced to endure a days-long car ride from one end of the country to the other. Maybe they find meaning in life. Maybe they even find love. But, of course, it couldn't be that simple. Not in "Next Exit," at least, which is currently available on VOD.
What saves writer/director Mali Elfman's feature debut from the formulaic trappings of countless previous movies is in finding moments of humanity within the margins. Beginning with the haunting imagery of a dead dad coming back from the other side to visit his young son, caught on camera for the world to see, "Next Exit" quickly establishes this weird, sci-fi premise to explore suicidal ideation in a society where a growing number of people now see living as even more of a pointless exercise than before. Led by the prickly Rose (Katie Parker) and the endlessly dry wit of Rahul Kohli's Teddy, the two travelers end up in the same rental car on their way to the same destination: a specialized San Francisco clinic that promises to "transition" visitors from this world to the next.
Mixing a macabre sense of humor with occasionally hard-hitting emotional truths, the film's vibes-only travelogue sequences put these two profoundly damaged individuals on a series of misadventures that gets them closer to finding the root cause of their own unhappiness. Drunken escapades, accidental vehicular manslaughter, and repeated visions of ghostly spirits follow. But most impressively of all, "Next Exit" offers up no easy solutions — and one deeply affecting mind-trip — once the pair finally make their way to the end of the road.
Slash/Back is a fun tale of reclaiming one's heritage ... with aliens
Take a familiar premise, add some classic cinematic touchstones, set it all within an underrepresented community of characters, and chances are you'll tap into something that audiences have been starving for. Yes, the inspirations for "Slash/Back" are obvious to anyone with a basic grasp of the medium — an unholy mix of "The Thing," "Attack the Block," and early-era Quentin Tarantino (as /Film's Matt Donato astutely pointed out in his original review) — but the final result is nothing if not refreshing. We've seen monsters hunt seemingly defenseless victims before, but perhaps never with as much low-budget ingenuity as seen here.
"Slash/Back" is yet another feature film debut, this time from filmmaker Nyla Innuksuk, where one key element brings a whole new level of dimension that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. Setting the story in the frozen Canadian tundra and centering the action on a group of Inuit girls earns the movie quite a bit of novelty, but grounding the emotions in a deceptively nuanced coming-of-age tale about reclaiming one's heritage elevates "Slash/Back" to another level entirely.
Repeatedly overcoming its limitations of scope and scale, the film finds clever ways to deliver gore-soaked thrills and a charismatic bunch of rarely-seen-before archetypes (the trio of Tasiana Shirley as Maika, Nalajoss Ellsworth as Uki, and Alexis Wolfe as Jesse provide most of the highlights). Because if there ever was a way to explore the complex emotions swirling around ideas of one's cultural identity, it might as well be through an invasion of zombie-like extraterrestrials literally appropriating anything in their path. With some gruesome kills and a hint of righteous rage simmering beneath the surface, "Slash/Back" is a welcome addition to a time-honored genre and is currently streaming on Shudder.
Finding meaning in Something in the Dirt
Conspiracy theories, by definition, aren't meant to offer up any concrete answers — only more and more questions, sucking like-minded skeptics into a never-ending cycle of mystery and seductive secrets. "Something in the Dirt" is the latest madcap effort by the directing duo of Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, both of whom also star in the picture as John and Levi, respectively. From the opening moments until its unforgettable final frame, the independently-produced feature practically aims to unsettle its viewers and leave us off-kilter ... all the better to make us willingly follow its two leads down the rabbit hole.
Part buddy comedy, part existential trip to the darkest and most hidden parts of Los Angeles, Benson and Moorhead's quarantine-filmed release perfectly sums up the paranoia and angst of this particular moment in time. But don't mistake this for a spoon-feeding comfort watch that seeks to deliver easy answers and a satisfying explanation. Those going in expecting cut-and-dry solutions to the supernatural events of the film — what begins as an inexplicably floating crystal in a ramshackle apartment soon devolves into gravitational fluctuations, earthquakes, and more — are bound for a letdown. What these immensely talented filmmakers deliver instead, however, makes "Something in the Dirt" into a bravura feat of run-and-gun filmmaking.
Similar in spirit to Jordan Peele's "Nope," which also followed a pair of opportunistic witnesses of otherworldly events who sought to cash in, "Something in the Dirt" takes a much more grounded approach that regularly questions whether anything these increasingly complicated characters have seen and experienced is actually real or not. All throughout, Benson and Moorhead take us on a wry journey through the minds of two conspiracy-minded souls who discover that, sometimes, there is such a thing as coincidences.