Capsule Review: New Life (2024) – A Subtle Character-Driven Horror Thriller
First premiered at last year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, New Life sure knows how to catch one’s attention with an engaging opening scene that puts the character in the middle of the action. That character in question is a bloodied young woman we soon learn her name is Jessica Murdock (Hayley Erin). She looks panicky and has a black eye. All I can tell you is that she’s on the run from a shadowy government agency led by Raymond Reed (Tony Amendola). He enlists his special agent, Elsa Gray (Sonya Walger) to track her down at all costs before she crosses the Canadian border.
John Rosman, making his feature debut as both director and screenwriter, uses the breadcrumb storytelling method to keep you invested and make you wonder with lots of questions. Like what Jessica has done that the government agency wanted to make sure she doesn’t cross the border? And what happens if she successfully reaches the border? Her pursuer, Elsa may have been a dedicated, no-nonsense special agent and she somehow reminds me of a female version of Tommy Lee Jones’s Sam Gerard in The Fugitive. But she also currently facing her own problem. An illness that increasingly affected her physical mobility and her time seems running out.
Elsa’s predicament turns out to be one of the major plot points in the movie, making her character all the more sympathetic and it also helps that Sonya Walger plays the role with enough subtlety. Her situation contrasts well with Hayley Erin’s Jessica Murdock as background details about her character are gradually unveiled bit by bit through flashback moments. Erin, who primarily starred in TV series including General Hospital and The Young and the Restless, delivers a performance decent enough worth rooting for her character.
New Life evolves more than just a Fugitive-like chase thriller between the pursued and the pursuer, albeit in an indie-movie standard so don’t expect any big action set pieces. The stakes are more personal and even existential in the depiction surrounding the two different women (Jessica and Elsa) going through their respective ordeals before eventually crossing paths at some point in the movie. Rosman also blends the character-driven thriller elements with a dash of body horror and I’m glad he favours practical blood and gore effects over glaring CGI. The horror moments may have been sparse but Rosman effectively executed them with urgency and matter-of-fact brutality. Maggie Green and Christina Kortum’s makeup, in the meantime, is equally praiseworthy.
New Life isn’t without its fair share of flaws, particularly from the frustratingly erratic pace during the middle stretch. From here, the otherwise lean 85-minute runtime drags longer than it should, even though it eventually picks up some steam as the movie progresses.
Despite the limited budget, the movie manages to show some better-than-expected production values, notably Mark Evans’s atmospheric cinematography that evokes a sense of foreboding dread and melancholy. Not to mention the stunning shot of the Pacific Northwest that takes place during the later part of the movie.
