3 stars (out of 5)
Formerly mysterious Canadian/Armenian/Egyptian (sort of) co-writer/co-producer/director Atom Egoyan has moved beyond pretentiously arty pics (like the ghastly Speaking Parts and The Adjuster) and gone almost mainstream with nasty sexy stuff (Chloe) and crime dramas (like the based-on-fact Devil’s Knot, out at cinemas here less than six months ago). And his latest, drawn to a point from the web series The Escapee, again shows his uncanny ability to assemble strong players, pack in much grim detail – and then lose the plot.
Told in a jarringly non-chronological fashion that adds nothing and only serves to make things frustrating, this follows what happens when landscaper Matthew (Ryan Reynolds) leaves his young daughter Cassandra (Peyton Kennedy) alone for mere moments and returns to find her inexplicably gone. He’s immediately suspected of something horrible by detectives Nicole (Rosario Dawson) and Jeffrey (Scott Speedman) and attacked by his wife Tina (Mireille Enos), and we might have trod a routine police procedural path from hereon but Egoyan opens the film by showing (spoilers? they’re not really necessary) that Cassandra is still alive (and now played by the older Alexia Fast) and being held captive by the seriously unpleasant Mika (Kevin Durand, also the sleazy exterminator in TV’s The Strain). We then leap back and forth in time to reveal that Matthew and Tina have split up, that both are being watched, that Nicole’s pedophile-chasing unit is seeking funds, that Jeffrey is a real bastard and much more, as Niagara Falls freezes almost completely in the background.
Revealing a snowbound Canadian wilderness that owes something to the films of creepy Canadian auteur David Cronenberg (Egoyan is a fan), this is compelling and disturbing for its first hour until one whopper of a credibility gap intrudes. And, after that, they just keep coming, breaking the unsettling spell, compromising the cast’s hard work and ensuring that this isn’t as captivating as it should be.
I Wake Up Screening 