[Rating: Minor Rock Fist Up]
Available on VOD Friday, October 3
A B-movie creature feature with A-list aspirations, Scurry never manages to connect these two worlds despite a number of qualifying assets, including good acting, great writing, and a solid concept. And while director Luke Sparke wrings as much suspense out of the film’s one-shot gimmick as possible, the lack of cuts harms more than it helps, particularly when its low-budget sensibilities fail the promise of the effort’s larger conceit.
A slow zoom from inside a high-rise office building to the street below sets the scene in the opening moments of Scurry, which proceeds down into a hole that’s opened up in the middle of an intersection. A man (Jamie Costa) comes-to in this pit, looking up at the street above while assessing his injuries and getting his bearings as the world seems to literally crumble around him. The road’s collapse forces the man to go deeper into the underground tunnel system beneath the street, where he meets a woman (Emalia) in a desperate state.
This lady is less concerned about their predicament underground than she is about what’s down there with them, however, asking the man, “You didn’t see?” It is right around then that the man realizes that something not at all human is in the tunnel system with them, leading him and the woman on a desperate crawl beneath the city and towards some kind of escape with just a lighter, cell phone light, and camcorder night vision to guide them. As the two move deeper into the tunnel system the danger only grows, and the injuries to both the man and the woman begin to wear them down.
Scurry taps into a number of basic fears that fuel the suspense of the story and serve as a stable foundation for the project as a whole. Darkness is creepy enough without claustrophobia and giant, murderous bugs added into the mix, so Sparke and the script by Tom Evans start with a good, playable hand. And from a concept standpoint, the one-shot approach would seem like an effective way to lock audiences into this world and the predicament of the man and woman (later identified as Mark and Kate).
The dark tunnels and flickering light sources provide Sparke and the editing team plenty of opportunities to hide their cuts, but it also locks them into long shots that don’t do them any favors when the creatures make their appearance. The single-take approach just doesn’t allow the action scenes any flexibility for inserts or close-ups that might have lent some authenticity to the creatures when in contact with the cast. As a result, when the movie builds up to an encounter and the tension of the good acting, top notch set design, and lighting crescendo, all a viewer gets is a painfully obvious CG bug and actors doing their best to sell what is essentially a mime performance.
And that’s a problem, because the fuel of Scurry comes from the tension of the creatures skittering around in the dark, and if the monsters don’t work, the effort has an uphill battle ahead of it. A mix of puppetry and real-world props brought the giant spiders in last year’s Sting to life with startling realism, and one can’t help but to wonder what might have been with Scurry if it had abandoned its one-shot conceit and followed a similar path.
It’s easy enough to wonder about, too, because Costa and Emalia sell the shit out of this, and are aided by a solid script that creates a believable world and fleshed-out characters by way of some sharp writing. What feels like a throwaway line early in the film about Mark being sober for six months has a genuine payoff down the line, as does some of the aggressive posturing Kate displays at the onset. The lighting work does more than just hide the cuts, too, and creates the illusion of underground paranoia while keeping the essential moments visible and in focus.
Sparke deserves credit for what works in equal part to what doesn’t, and the former outweighs the latter by a decent margin. Scurry might be high concept at its foundation, but its mechanics draw on classic filmmaking tropes that effectively use silence, shadow, and setting to elicit suspense and audience buy-in. The movie features a few genuinely creepy moments and a couple of fun kills that keep things interesting, and mime work aside, Costa and Emalia do about as well as anyone could under the circumstances.
A low budget Cloverfield meets A Quiet Place mash-up with a healthy dose of CGI and a visual gimmick that does more harm than good, Scurry aims high…and misses. The movie is far from a failure, however, and is on the better end of the best Sy-Fy channel originals (and is reminiscent of that ilk). Luckily for Mark and Kate, they just have to deal with bugs, though, as there isn’t a Sharknado in sight.
“Obvious Child” is the debut novel of Warren Cantrell, a film and music critic based out of Seattle, Washington. Mr. Cantrell has covered the Sundance and Seattle International Film Festivals, and provides regular dispatches for Scene-Stealers and The Playlist. Warren holds a B.A. and M.A. in History, and his hobbies include bourbon drinking, novel writing, and full-contact kickboxing.
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