Mark Reviews Movies: THE AVIARY

The Aviary, Saban Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 28, 2022

It's never entirely clear what's real, what's imagined, what's the truth, and what's a lie in The Aviary, an admirable mind-bender that relies on dialogue, solid performances, and simple trickery to keep us continually in the dark. The game is the main objective here, and while co-writers/co-directors Chris Cullari and Jennifer Raite play it with restraint and an occasionally unnerving sense of mystery, that game ultimately reaches something of a dead end.

Until then, though, we're treated to a fairly engaging mix of storytelling and psychology as a puzzle. It all begins and continues through to the end with two women, wandering through an unknown desert. At first, there are only hints and suggestions of where they come from, what they have been through, and what their destination and goal are. Cullari and Raite drop pieces of that puzzle for us to pick up along the way.

Jillian (Malin Akerman) and Blair (Lorenza Izzo) have left a place called "the Aviary," and as they travel west, following the sun and using only a stolen surveyor's map, the lights of that place grow smaller and dimmer. That comes as a bit of a surprise to Jillian, considering how much that place has defined her life until this moment. She jokes with Blair about how her training in the scouts has finally come in handy, while also wondering if that childhood organization would be considered a cult. It would be amusing, she posits, if her first cult saved her from the second.

That is about all we need to know in terms of the basic premise, and Cullari and Raite are knowing enough to keep the setup that simple. Jillian and Blair were in a cult, and now, they're walking through the desert, trying to reach the nearest town and freedom.

It will take about four days, which is pushing the limits of their limited supply of food and water, but the map Jillian took from the cult's compound doesn't account for topography. There are hills for which the two women haven't accounted. Climbing or walking around them will add time to the trek.

For the most part, the movie is a two-hander, revolving around Jillian and Blair as they walk, reminisce about the moment each one decided to leave the cult, recall the authoritarian ways of the group's leader, and end up at increasing odds about details and information both trivial and significant. With enough time and as their resources dwindle, even the little disagreements start to seem like big problems. Akerman and Izzo are quite adept at gradually communicating that regression of this connection and each character's grip on reality.

In terms of debates of matters tangible and observable, there's a laptop, which Blair stole from the cult's leader and which contains videos of members' "therapy" sessions. The computer could put the guy in prison, Jillian argues, but Blair counters that she doesn't want her secrets to become a matter of public record. Surely, other members don't want to be freed from the cult, only to be humiliated, either.

Another question involves the journey itself, which keeps circling around, despite Jillian and later Blair's guidance. One of them could become lost, but for both of them to lose the way means that something else is happening here.

The game being played by the narrative is one of constant uncertainty. It comes through words, such as Jillian making the case for the "good parts" of the cult in one scene, only to forget or deny having said those sentiments in the first place. The question in those cases, obviously, is whether this is a case of memory—either lost on the part of Jillian in that example or imagined by Blair in the moment—or of deception. Either case could be made here, since Jillian has dreams of the cult leader, his face surrounded by lights of changing colors and going through his "therapeutic" process with her. The leader, by the way, is named Seth, and he's played in these dreams and waking moments of imagination—or, perhaps, in the flesh at various times, for all we or the women know—by Chris Messina, whose serenity offers an eerie contrast to the physical and psychological abuse both women say he committed against them and others.

The bigger question, then, isn't if either or both of these women are lying about part or all of their intentions here. It's more about whether or not we can believe anything that they see, say, or suspect, because Seth's practices might have changed the very nature of how they perceive the world and remember their own pasts.

Upon realizing this fundamental truth of the game being played on the characters (and, by extension us), Cullari and Raite certainly have upped the ante in confounding the very nature of these characters, their motives, and everything they see and experience over the course of their winding trek. On the flip side, though, the filmmakers have also removed any sense of the stakes of this story, since neither protagonist and none of what occurs can be trusted.

It's not the end of the story of The Aviary. This decisive shift, though, does mark the end of the movie's capacity to make us care about what is or isn't happening within a story that, ultimately, is just playing to trick us.

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