Movie Review: 'Double Walker' is a Smart, Scary Take on Murder Mystery and Revenge

Double Walker is a trippy take on a murder mystery with the victim as the investigator and avenging angel. Sylvie Mix stars in Double Walker as The Ghost. We never learn her name and our introduction to The Ghost defies expectations. As the story begins, a man is in a park with his dog. The dog runs off into a nearby forest and finds a young woman hiding in the forest. She’s wearing only a long white t-shirt and she doesn’t speak.

The man offers his coat and asks if she’s alright and if she needs to go to a hospital. She doesn’t respond. He decides that since she appears uninjured that she should go back to his house with him. There is a very specific tension in this sequence, one that indicates that this young woman may not be safe with this man. Actor Justin Rose infuses this character with just the right amount of creepy menace all while Sylvie Mix is building her own sense of mystery that will evolve into menace as the story plays out.

I will leave you to discover what exactly happens in that opening sequence as it is a terrifically plotted piece of thriller horror entertainment. From here, our Ghost wanders in the night occasionally offering an ethereal voiceover that layers in some exposition. The Ghost was very recently a 9 year old girl who witnessed something awful and wound up dead because of it. Her father, played by Quinn Armstrong, is at the center of what happened to her but the exact role he played won’t be revealed until the end.

While Double Walker is evolving into a revenge thriller where Ghost appears to be tracking down the men who abused her, there is a strange sort of love story that plays as a sort of B-Plot. As Ghost is wandering downtown, and seeming to follow one man in particular, she meets Jack, a kindly Movie Theater manager. Jack is just locking up the theater for the night but seeing Ghost in just her long white t-shirt, he offers to have her in to grab a coat from lost and found.

You might think this is the set up for something awful to happen to Jack and that is a great source of tension in this story. The well modulated performance of actor Jacob Rice however, doesn’t carry the same edge of creepiness that the dog walker showed in the early part of the movie. Jack's manner is genuine and sweet and while he also ends up inviting Ghost back to his home, he immediately goes to bed alone after setting Ghost up on the couch and turning on the TV for her.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Jack is safe but it sets a precedent for the character of Ghost who has full agency over the men she decides to stalk and kill. This is about revenge and setting things right and while there will be collateral damage in this, of the most unexpected variety, Ghost is not a monster, just a woman who was wronged and seeking her own kind of justice for what happened to her and what is implied to have happened to other young girls.

Dream sequences and flashbacks can seem like a crutch or a cliche in the hands of the wrong director. First time director Colin West however, has a particular deftness in the ethereal and mysterious ways he takes us back in time. At night, Ghost travels to her childhood home where her mother, played by actress Maika Carter, is lost in grief. She drinks, she cries, her suffering is on a soul deep level. She can’t see Ghost, it’s a mystery as to who can and cannot see her, but when she lays her head on Ghost’s lap it’s a lovely and strange moment.

Fair warning, there is plenty of blood in Double Walker and other elements that may be hard for some viewers including visual allusions to sexual assault, child abuse, domestic abuse and so on. Double Walker is a horror movie at the end of the day so you should probably expect troubling elements going in, but nevertheless I wanted to include a little trigger warning to make sure we are all on the same page.

With that being said, I was very impressed with Double Walker. Sylvie Mix is an exciting actress with a strong air of mystery that curdles into bloody vengeance rather beautifully. Revenge movies thrive on the notion of righteous violence and the fantasy of a violent and definitive form of justice and Double Walker takes full advantage of that while also serving the understanding of the futility of this kind of violence, something that comes to full clarity in the final moments of the final act.

The final act of Double Walker has one final surprise for you, a fascinating and dreamy coda that resets the table of the entire story, if only for a moment. This sequence is a potentially divisive inclusion, one that may turn off some viewers. For me, I found it cathartic and compelling. Director Colin West and star Sylvie Mix each shine in this moment and Double Walker gets an extra kick of excitement leading to a haunting final image.

Double Walker will be available via most on-demand rental services on Friday, November 12th, 2021, from Cranked Up Pictures.