Tyro Canadian director Joseph Bourque and the Passer family have ejected CRASH SITE, a seemingly high powered melodrama in which spouses attending a family event at their country lodge are stalked by assailants. Although it begins and ends on a note of corporate espionage,, the bulk of the movie follows the couple's survival and marital disintegration in the wilderness, following a car crash in which their Jeep had been sabotaged. Borque and his scenarist Joseph Passer have likewise sabotage their vehicle by portraying the Sanders as unsympathetic and aggressively self-centered -- and in her case, stupidly impulsive. Without a likable character in sight, the story degenerates into tedium. The finale generates some excitement but the denouement is dreary and clichéd. One could say the parallels generated in the story are interesting to consider -- such as the cataclysmic auto wreck that the Sanders miraculously survive, occurring right after Dan Sanders' financial firm begins faltering under a hacker's siege. And some effort is made to convey the Sanders' upper class status and the business life of Dan as a purveyor of great banking wealth, who is helpless and hapless, hobbled and without a compass in the forest. But the twists and turns in CRASH SITE are not engaging enough because the leads are insufferable whiners.
My previous exposure to Bourque was the not-bad SyFy Channel programmers DOOMSDAY PROPHECY (2011) and TERMINATION POINT (2007). CRASH SITE is advertised as a thriller with horror elements, with horrific scenes credited to human led carnage (mostly off-screen) that occurs during the final act and the potentially exciting but underdeveloped subplot of hungry wolves that follow the hapless Sanders couple through the outback. These mild horrors are rendered microscopic compared with the film's score, an obtrusive cacophony of poor library music that always threatens to sink this delicate project into even muddier mediocrity. As the "battling bickersons," Sebastian Spence as Dan tries hard but is submerged in a weak characters, while Charisma Carpenter as the wife has all the charm of a snake in a sleeping bag. The remaining cast was perfunctory and unmemorable.
My previous exposure to Bourque was the not-bad SyFy Channel programmers DOOMSDAY PROPHECY (2011) and TERMINATION POINT (2007). CRASH SITE is advertised as a thriller with horror elements, with horrific scenes credited to human led carnage (mostly off-screen) that occurs during the final act and the potentially exciting but underdeveloped subplot of hungry wolves that follow the hapless Sanders couple through the outback. These mild horrors are rendered microscopic compared with the film's score, an obtrusive cacophony of poor library music that always threatens to sink this delicate project into even muddier mediocrity. As the "battling bickersons," Sebastian Spence as Dan tries hard but is submerged in a weak characters, while Charisma Carpenter as the wife has all the charm of a snake in a sleeping bag. The remaining cast was perfunctory and unmemorable.
