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DON'T GO
Director: David Gleeson Cast: Stephen Dorff, Melissa George, Aoibhinn McGinnity, Simon Delaney, Grace Farrell MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:31 Release Date: 10/26/18 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 25, 2018 Ronan Blaney and director David Gleeson's screenplay for Don't Go is built entirely around its ending. The plot is inconsequential, except to put into place the minimal pieces that are required to get to the finale. The characters only matter in that they follow that straight line to the end. The explanation for how the final twist of fortune occurs really doesn't mean anything, because the only thing that matters is what happens. The story involves Ben Slater (Stephen Dorff), an author who can't write, and his wife Hazel (Melissa George). The couple's young daughter Molly (Grace Farrell) has died in an accident. They move from Dublin to Hazel's little hometown, where she plans to re-open the local hotel, while Ben takes a job teaching at a local Catholic school. Ben begins having a recurring dream about one of the family's visits to the nearby beach. The dream is vivid at first and quickly becomes supernatural: He awakens with the phrase "Seas the day" written in the sand by him, with little flags from a sandcastle in his hand, and, eventually, with the idea that he can pull Molly out of the dream and back into existence. In between the repeated dream scene and plenty of omens (e.g., the phrase with the malapropism, crows, strange noises inside the hotel), Ben becomes obsessed, while Hazel begins to think her husband has gone insane. Paying an unexpected visit to the couple is Hazel's best friend Serena (Aoibhinn McGinnity), who's tormented by guilt and has a shared secret with Ben that he doesn't want revealed. At a certain point, the solution to all of the pieces of this mystery becomes inevitable. The secret between Ben and Serena is immediately apparent (It also leads to the unfortunately amusing staging of the girl's demise), and for as weird and inexplicable as the metaphysical nature of Ben's lucid dream may be, his ultimate decision might as well be flashing on the screen every time a new piece of that puzzle shows up in the story. Don't Go has an intriguing foundation of grief and guilt, but even those fundamental themes only exist to keep the story moving toward its conclusion. To actually explore those things in a meaningful way, after all, would get in the way of the movie's transparent mechanics. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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