Southbound Review (Film, 2016) #31DaysOfHorror
content warning: foul language, blood, gore, grief, self-harm, violence against women, medical/surgical footage, nudity
Southbound is an anthology horror/weird fiction film featuring five interconnected stories set on a deserted highway. These shorts share the same general setting, a set of bizarre floating creatures, and a shared ending/starting point for each story. Otherwise, each team of writers/directors gets to play around with their own ideas.
In “The Way Out,” two men are fleeing from something. There’s a mysterious creature in the distance and one of them is clearly injured. Every time they try to escape, they wind up at the same rundown truck stop. It’s a looping horror narrative structure more commonly seen in video games than horror films and it works as a short.
Radio Silence (a directorial team) direct a screenplay written by member Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and starring members Chad Villella and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin. It’s a great opening to an anthology film because the concept is so different. Opening with something this strange and unpredictable let’s the audience know anything is possible as the other stories get their time to shine. I’m a huge fan of this kind of narrative structure in weird fiction and “The Way Out” finds just the right balance between looping scenes and new information to soar onscreen.
In “Siren,” a touring band called The White Lights leave the motel at the truck stop and promptly get a flat tire. There are no towns nearby and AAA can’t help them. A friendly couple offer them a ride and a place to spend the night until they can contact the closest repair shop in the morning. The stress of the crash is the least of their worries, as the friendly couple slowly reveal their true intentions.
Writer/director Roxanne Benjamin and writer Susan Burke craft a tense horror story hidden behind nostalgia. The couple who picks up the band and their friends all claim to be very traditional people with traditional beliefs. They have perfect clothes and perfect smiles and perfectly polite conversations. It’s a great trick of misdirection that slowly bleeds into the actual horror of what’s going on there. “Siren” is a delicate balance act of expectations and foreshadowing.
In “The Accident,” a distracted driver runs over a pedestrian on the highway. He calls 911 for help, but they can’t assist him directly because they can’t locate his position. He’s given instructions over the phone of what to do: get to the nearest town, find help, and do whatever they say.
Writer/director David Bruckner’s “The Accident” is brutal. This is a story in full panic mode the entire time. You see the woman’s condition get worse in real time as the driver tries to stay calm and help any way he can. He’s driven by guilt and desperation. The gore in this film is very heavy and realistic; it eventually leads to some very disturbing surgical footage. This is horrifying, yes, but it is far more extreme in content than the rest of the film.
In “Jailbreak,” a man barges into a bar right off the abandoned highway. He threatens everyone with a shotgun and demands they follow his instructions. He’s trying to find his sister and will stop at nothing to get her. He takes the bartender hostage, but is warned every step of the way that it is an awful idea.
Writer/director Patrick Horvath and writer Dallas Hallam put together a great thriller in “Jailbreak.” The form is familiar, but the actual story is something new. If there’s a lynchpin to the logic of Southbound, it’s “Jailbreak.” All the stories deal with guilt and loss in their own way, but “Jailbreak” explores what can happen when you find peace after suffering.
In “The Way In,” a college-bound girl vacations with her parents before she starts her freshman year. They drive down the highway to their vacation home. Once they settle in, three masked men break into their home looking for justice.
“The Way In,” directed by Radio Silence and written by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, is a home invasion horror film. Like many of the shorts in Southbound, the form you expect is an act of misdirection. While it is still very much on trend for a home invasion horror to have no reason beyond “you were there” for the attack, the right reason can be just as terrifying as bad luck and random chance. It’s even more terrifying if the victims find out the reason but the audience does not.
Southbound is a solid horror anthology that leans heavily into weird fiction tropes. Weird fiction tends to linger more than straight forward horror does. It’s an exploration of a feeling or a concept that will have an ending, but perhaps not a particularly cathartic resolution. It’s the perfect style choice for a collection that tries to connect separate short films on so many levels. There’s a logic to this world and the stories it tells. That doesn’t mean it needs to reveal all of its secrets.
Southbound is streaming on Shudder.
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