LET HER OUT (2016)

Director: Cody Calahan. Cast: Alanna LeVierge, Nina Kiri, Adam Christie, Kate Fenton, Michael Lipka. Canada  2016. 89 mins.

Bike courier Helen is repeatedly drawn back to the motel where her hooker mother tried to kill her in the womb (with a pair of scissors) twenty-three years ago. Following a serious accident Helen suffers a traumatic head injury and is diagnosed as having ‘vanishing twin syndrome’ It turns out that her mother was carrying twins at the time but as a result of her self-inflicted trauma, the twin died in the uterus and was reabsorbed back into Helen. Unfortunately for Helen, and her friends, the twin is taking over Helen’s psyche – and eventually will want out...  

Following on from his two ANTISOCIAL films, director Cody Calahan serves up a female Jekyll and Hyde wrapped in THE NEON DEMON visual aesthetic of Nicolas Winding Refn, and finishes it off with a garnish of flesh tearing body-horror.  

It was an odd choice for the FrightFest Thursday night late slot which has in recent years tended to feature relatively undemanding crowd-pleasing creature features such as killer wasps in STUNG in 2015 and killer beavers in ZOMBEAVERS the year before. Perhaps as a result I may have (partially at least) approached it in the wrong frame of mind, but I just couldn’t seem to engage with the overly ponderous, over baked nature of the film at all.

That’s not to take anything away from Alanna LeVierge’s central performance as Helen, who, in her feature debut, delivers both an emotional and physical powerhouse portrayal of the tortured courier with the worrying blackouts. 

I guess I was waiting for the twist, which never came. The story plays out exactly as I’d imagine it would – and I didn’t need the not-so-subtle over-egged attempts at symbolism such as naming the hotel Helen is drawn to ‘The Gemini’ (sigh). At one point I began speculating as to whether the shadowed figure who calmly enters her mother’s motel room and rapes her might have been of supernatural origin? There then seemed to be a hint that her mother’s ghost was still haunting the motel as implied by the quickly glimpsed silhouette at the motel  – but alas neither of these potentially diverting ideas materialised.

Still, kudos to a film that tries to stage a dramatic dash across neon soaked urban Canadian streets on a bicycle.

**(out of 5*)

Paul Worts