Darby Thorne (Havana Rose Liu) is a troubled young woman reluctantly in court mandated rehab in Sacramento, California. Darby is alerted her mother has suffered a brain aneurysm and is now in the hospital but her doctor is unavailable to sign off any outside communication or furlough. Out of desperation Darby steals one of the facility workers vehicles intent on driving to Salt Lake City to visit her mother in the hospital despite her estrangement from her family who've made clear they don't want her there. Bad weather causes road closures and Darby is directed to the Muir's Rest visitors center where four others consisting of husband and wife Ed (Dennis Haysbert) and Sandi (Dale Dickey), and others Ash (Danny Ramirez) and Lars (David Rysdahl). As Darby tries in vain to get a signal in the parking lot, she comes across a beat up windowless ban where a child is bound and gagged in the back. Unable to dial 911, Darby must now figure out who of the strangers she's stuck with is the abductor and survive the storm and the night.
No Exit is an adaptation of the 2017 novel of the same name by Taylor Adams. The film is directed by Damien Power whose previous effort was the well regarded 2016 horror film Killing Ground and written by scribes Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari whose previous credits include the MCU film Ant Man and the Wasp as well as the critically maligned Die in a Gunfight that while appearing on the annual Blacklist of best unproduced screenplays had a troubled production. No Exit takes a small scale premise and creates a suitably twisty and engaging thriller.
Havana Rose Liu fantastic in the lead as Darby Thorne and this is Liu's first time playing a lead having done a handful of supporting work before this. We get some solid moments of Liu dealing with her past trauma and showing sides of acerbic cynicism and emotional vulnerability and with the more physically challenging bits that come through later in the film I really feel this could be a star making performance for Liu and can't wait to see what's next for her. The movie being a limited location piece is predicated upon having a strong supporting cast and we get that with an eclectic bunch of character actors making up those at the rest stop with reliable stapes like the always welcome Dennis Haysbert and Dale Dickey as well as strong relatively newish actors like Danny Ramirez and David Rysdahl. Damien Power shows a solid handling of this type of limited location thriller with solid establishment of the Visitors Center and its surrounding locales and you feel the bitterness of the cold, the oppressiveness of the isolation, and tension and unease of the group with every moment.
The script by Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari is taut and well-paced with character, situation, and stakes effectively established while keeping the audience on edge. For the most part the movie is framed from Darby's point of view so we're very much in her shoes as she's trapped in this building in the middle of nowhere with no way out. The story is suitably twisty with solid revelations and reversals as expected for a movie of this ilk, but I wasn't completely sold on one revelation towards the third act. Admittedly it wasn't a "breaker" for me personally but it felt like the movie overextended itself a bit in how certain things were connected but your mileage may vary.
No Exit is a solid thriller anchored by a breakout lead from Havana Rose Liu as Darby Thorne, with a strong supporting cast and strong sense of isolation and unease created by director Damien Power from a taut well-paced script by Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, No Exit makes for some good thrills that don't let up until the end. The movie doesn't quite stick the landing with one of its revelations (for me personally anyway) but aside from that one point I was actively engaged by No Exit and recommend it highly.
