Movie Review: 'No Exit'

No Exit is a nasty little thriller about an abducted girl, a former drug addict on the run, and a snowstorm that traps a disparate group of people at a roadside shelter. Directed by Damian Power, No Exit has tension and suspense but cannot sustain the excitement for the entire run time. Issues of logic and motivation come in late in the 3rd act, and a magical nail gun becomes an overpowered Deus Ex Machina in the unsatisfying conclusion.

No Exit stars the very talented Havana Rose Liu as Darby, a reformed drug addict currently finishing out a stint at a rehab facility. The plot of No Exit kicks in when Darby manages an escape from the rehab facility. Darby has just learned that her mother is in the hospital on the brink of death and Darby is determined to reach her before she passes on. Darby’s escape is thwarted by a massive snow storm that closes the roads and forces her to take shelter and a roadside shelter.

Already at the shelter are a group of supposed strangers. Dennis Haysbert plays a retired military man, Ed, who is traveling to Reno for some high stakes gambling alongside his wife, Sandi (Dale Dickey). Ash (Danny Ramirez) is a handsome young man first seen taking a nap on a bench in the shelter while Lars (David Rysdahl) is a greasy loner trying and failing to go unnoticed in the corner of the shelter. Lars could not seem more shady and shifty if he’d tattooed the word suspect on his forehead and worried aloud about the girl tied up in the back of his van.

No Exit is not subtle, the film has no chill. Despite a solid lead performance from Havana Rose Liu, who has an easy and unforced charisma, No Exit wastes a solid set up and a couple of really tense scenes in favor of thriller tropes and more blood than seems necessary. Mila Harris plays the unnamed kidnap victim but she’s little more than a device to move the plot. The script mistakenly gives the child a condition that we are told could kill her if her adrenalin spikes. I would think being kidnapped and put in the back of a van before being forced to run for your life during a snowstorm might affect a condition such as this but No Exit has no baseline reality so the girl’s illness is mostly a convenient way to put her in danger and create more artificial tension.

I was excited to see Dennis Haysbert have a prominent role in No Exit. The former President of the United States on the series 24 has a gravitas, a presence, that could have been used to better effect in No Exit. Haysbert has one standout set piece in the film’s strong second act but Haysbert’s performance is squandered in the less than stellar third act which relies too heavily on bloody violence and easy, convenient plot devices to move things along to a rather predictable and flat ending.

Poor Danny Ramirez gets the short end of the stick in the third act. Saddled with unclear motivations and having to cover for the plot conveniences, Ramirez relies on big emotional displays and horror villain levels of over the top performance to try and paper over why his character does what he does. It’s Ramirez who wields the magical power of the magic nail gun in No Exit, a nail gun that has all of the function and even greater killing power, apparently, than the actual gun that gets bounced around by the convenience of the plot. The actual gun is always where it needs to be, in the hands of different characters, based on what the plot needs in order to jump to the next set piece.

I’m told by friends who have read the book version of No Exit, written by Author Taylor Adams, that the book is quite good. The pace of the book is taut and the examination of the characters is thorough. Books have the advantage of space to delve deeper into the minds of characters whereas movies have to show rather than tell. Without the space to explore the characters and create a tighter logic to the story, the makers of No Exit choose to fall back on convenience and familiar, predictable tropes to get through a third act that squanders the excitement of the opening and middle portions of the movie.

No Exit debuts on Hulu on Friday, February 25th, 2022.