‘No Exit’ Is An Engaging Claustrophobic Thriller That Needs More Emotional Weight

No Exit, based on the novel by Taylor Adams, is a remarkably sleek thriller that excels in its simplicity. The outing is directed by Damien Power (from a script by Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, adapting the novel), and it’s very much a hybrid of the haunted-house-style/whodunit subgenres as we watch our protagonist struggle to find out who did something quite terrible amidst an isolated, small, snowy locale. It’s an altogether intriguing thriller, but one that moves a little too fast that could benefit from slowing down and letting us get our bearings with the characters.

College student Darby (Havana Rose Liu) has had her fair share of troubles. She’s in rehab for one, and cleverly escapes to visit her mother in the hospital. Plans often go awry, and hers is no exception as the young woman gets stranded at a mountain visitor center due to an impenetrable blizzard. She’s stuck with an odd cast of characters—Ash (Danny Ramirez), Lars (David Rysdahl), and married couple Sandi (Dale Dickey) and Ed (Dennis Haysbert). To her surprise, Darby discovers one of the snowed-in vehicles has a kidnapped young girl inside. She’s got to figure out who she can trust, who she can’t, and how she can save the girl.

Lead Havana Rose Liu does a great job as the besieged Darby, a character who struggles through the complexity of her rehab escape alongside her isolation with this shady band of suspects. Everyone plays their roles with a little mystery up front, giving away little until the film really gets moving, and combined with the snowed-in, tense location it’s a claustrophobic, elegantly simple thriller overall that takes advantage of the gravity of the crime and the impossibility of getting aid. It’s literally her against the tiny, tiny world.

It’s a solid thriller overall, and one that moves a rhetorical mile a minute. The biggest issue, however, is there are instances where it would be nice to slow a little and spend more time with our protagonist (especially in advance of the escalating reveal). Liu does a good job with the character, but one can’t help but feel that many of the characters here (hers included) are under-written. Having a little more time, a bit more to emotionally grab onto, would have added to one’s emotional connection with the material.

Altogether, No Exit is a constrained and contained beast of a film. It’s a sleek, pointed narrative with little fat. It moves quickly, packs some nice surprises, and there are proper high stakes to give it some gravity. It establishes and quickly benefits from a claustrophobic setting and it makes a lot of it. At the same time, the emotional stakes are blunted a bit by its refusal to stop and let us engage with the characters and form attachments that can raise stakes or add weight to unexpected surprises. It’s a fun thriller, but one that needs a lot more emotional weight.

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