Intensity 🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by John Rosman
A bloodied woman on the run begins a frantic chase in John Rosman’s debut thriller, New Life. This film holds its cards tight for half the movie, allowing the major implications of the plot lines to simmer before revealing the root causes of the pursuit, like a bomb drop. New Life transitions from political thriller to body horror in a dramatic shift that moved me from curious to engrossed.
In every film festival I attend, there is always an undersung movie that I was completely unaware of before arriving, only to leave ready to sing its praises. For The Overlook Film Festival 2024, this movie was New Life. There is a reason that XYZ took a chance on John Rosman, a writer/director with an almost empty IMdB profile. He is a talent to be tracked beginning now. This film’s narrative decision-making, storytelling, and editing demonstrate his deft touch for thrillers and horror. Granted, the first act feels like a somewhat conventional action thriller, but it morphs into something much greater with plot stakes revelations, and the developmental depth of the main characters.
Though the movie has several interesting supporting characters, it is largely about two characters: the woman on the run and the woman pursuing her. New aspects of these women get added throughout the movie, and the character arcs build and even manage to flip your perspective on them. In a cat-and-mouse pursuit, there is always a rooting interest. Think of The Fugitive… by way of David Cronenberg.
The New Life Cast:
- Hayley Erin plays Jessica Murdock, the woman on the run. Battered and bloody from escaping a secure facility, she’s heading for the Canadian border.
- Sonya Walger plays Elsa Gray, an agent contracted to track and find Jessica. Elsa has recently been diagnosed with ALS.
- Tony Amendola plays Raymond Reed, Elsa’s boss, a no-nonsense holder of many secrets
- Ayanna Berkshire plays Molly, a barkeep who gives Jess refuge.
- Blaine Palmer plays Frank Lerner, a kind farmer who lends Molly a hand.
- Betty Moyer plays Molly Lerner, Frank’s equally compassionate wife.
- Nick George plays Ian, Jess’s boyfriend
- Jeb Berrier plays Vince Harding, Elsa’s technical controller and confidant
- Kevin-Michael Moore plays Sal, Elsa’s ALS counselor
A Short Synopsis of New Life:
We join Jessica in media res as she flees town to evade her pursuit after discovering her home has been compromised. People with guns are searching her home, so she manages to sneak into the back of a pickup truck for destinations unknown. When the truck stops at a public rest stop, she finds a map in the glove box and heads for the Canadian border on foot. After spending the night sleeping in an open barn, the farmer, Frank, catches her stealing old canned food from his pantry. He and his wife are generous, offering her a meal and a place to rest. Jessica accepts the meal, but she insists on hitting the road again. The farmers don’t pry, and Frank even lends a hand by driving her north as far as she’d like.
Raymond Reed recruits Elsa Gray to find Jessica and bring her in, dead or alive! It’s contract work, and Elsa is the best. Elsa has a sterling reputation as a tracker, but her life is changing. Her ALS symptoms are manifesting, and she’s doing her damndest to keep up the effort despite her deteriorating physical abilities. She consults a nurse specialist but is reluctant to reveal her condition to her boss or colleagues. Her career and reputation are at stake, and she is determined to catch Jessica before something awful happens.
We get a flashback to happier times. Elsa and Ian are camping, having a good time. A dog visits them by the campfire. Elsa overrides Ian’s objections to take in a stray at a campsite. The dog is affectionate, and Jess teases Ian that the dog will get more loving than he will that night. Switching back to the present, the investigative team tracks Jessica’s whereabouts, but time is running out.
Jessica arrives at a town near the border and lands a quick job doing dishes at a local bar to get enough money for a room for the night. Once again, a stranger offers help. As a domestic abuse survivor, Molly has noticed that Jess bears all the scars of a beating, creating a sympathetic bond between the two women. She pays Jess for a day’s work plus a room for the night at her house. After the long work shift, they toast each other over a bottle of whiskey, “To a New Life!”
AND THEN THE CRITICAL INFORMATION LANDS
As the story develops, it lays down some tantalizing breadcrumbs :
- Why is Jess on the run? Is Jess carrying secrets? Is she a mutant lab test subject? Did she kill somebody important? Is she patient zero? Is she the Devil? Is she an alien? Up until this point, we don’t know. What is the organization that is pursuing her?
- What happened to Ian? Did he abuse her? Did she abandon him?
- What’s up with that dog? The Thing vibes come into play. Or maybe the dog is just a dog.
- What happens if she manages to cross the border?
- Why is Elsa, an ailing middle-aged woman, the only person assigned to the pursuit?
All of these questions are resolved with two brilliant and quick sequences. One is revealed through a Jessica flashback, and the other is revealed by Elsa and her equipment once she believes she has caught up to Jessica. It was a double AHA! Moment. And then, the horror movie kicks in.
New Life Evaluation:
You need to be patient with this movie. John Rosman admitted that some people have gotten frustrated with the first act, but for all the breadcrumb reasons I listed, the decision to hold off on the reveal was WORTH IT. The situational irony (where the characters know more than the audience) is expertly pulled off by Elsa, a fully unreliable narrator, and Jess… who is half of an unreliable narrator, as she is almost as in the dark as we are about her situation.
When the movie eventually gets good and gory in the second half, full marks go to Christina Kortum, a disciple of Oscar-winning makeup icon Chris Walas. Her morphs were near gag-inducing and were tremendously effective. Kortum has a biologist background, and it shows up here. The production team mentioned The Fly as an inspiration, and they managed to apply their makeup to the characters who can still emote through the heavy prosthetics and goo.
If you’ve seen Lost or For All Mankind, you will know how good an actress Sonya Walger is. She channels that same no-nonsense, steely woman-in-charge vibe to this role. But, with the added layer that she too is having to deal with a “New Life” situation in handling her ALS. The movie treated her condition with seriousness and unexpected grace.
This film is Hayley Erin’s first lead role in a feature film. According to John Rosman, she took her considerable experience from her work on The Young and the Restless and nailed every scene. She displayed a ton of emotional range as her life crashed through all sorts of terrible situations. Most importantly, she embodied the character really well: stubborn, driven, and horrified. She nailed the performance.
Conclusion:
Again, this movie was a complete surprise to me. The movie is clearly a movie of this era, having gone through the traumas of the recent past. Our ability to sympathize with both of the leads is strong. By the finale, you are rooting for both Elsa and Jess, but the conclusion only allows one to succeed. My interview with John Rosman and Christina Kortum will be up soon, but we discussed some spoiler-rich information, so you might want to see the film first and then listen to us. I firmly believe this movie makes the biggest impact if you wait for the plot bomb in the middle, coming in relatively cold. You’ll find Rosman is an energetic and engaging interview, and he shared a lot of terrific insights.
They shot New Life in Oregon, which is ALWAYS a plus for me. I didn’t know it until the credits rolled (though I should have been able to spot the St. John’s bridge in the background), so I can’t say that influenced my rating of the movie, but I do celebrate that fact. They rented a farmhouse near the Wallowa Mountains, which you will see at the end of the credits, and it’s gorgeous. Makes me proud to be an Oregonian. Sometimes, the authenticity necessitated by a small budget proves that good location scouting supersedes digital backgrounds and corrections in post-production. Shoot it in the frame!
The MPAA has not given New Life a rating. It would likely garner an R-rating for gore, violence, and some language. The movie will be released this Spring at select theaters, and will be available for VOD downloading day and date with the theatrical release. XYZ is handling the film’s promotion. A streaming service has not yet been contracted for this movie.
Review by Eric Li
Here is the trailer… warning: it includes some spoiler-ish content.