No Exit

No Exit

Stranded at a rest stop in the mountains during a blizzard, a recovering addict discovers a kidnapped child hidden in a car belonging to one of the people inside the building which sets her on a terrifying struggle to identify who among them is the kidnapper.

  • Released: 2022-02-25
  • Runtime: 96 minutes
  • Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thrillers
  • Stars: Havana Rose Liu, Danny Ramirez, Dennis Haysbert, Dale Dickey, David Rysdahl, Mila Harris, Benedict Wall, Kirsty Hamilton, James Gaylyn, Lisa Zhang, Nick Davies, Hweiling Ow, Jen Van Epps
  • Director: Damien Power
 Comments
  • paulclaassen - 6 June 2024
    A Nice surprise with interesting twists.
    Recovering drug addict Darby (Havana Rose Liu) is in rehab when she receives a call her mother has been rushed to hospital for an emergency operation. Even though her sister thinks its best for Darby not to visit her mother, Darby is desperate to see her. This made me root for her. Despite obvious family challenges in the past her mother was still a driving force that compelled her to escape from rehab, steal a car, and made a journey to see her.

    Unfortunately for Darby she gets caught in a blizzard and has to seek shelter at a Visitors Centre until the weather clears up. However, when she accidentally stumbles upon a gagged kid in the back of a van, the night is about to turn into a nightmare! With only a handful of people at the Centre, the guessing game starts as to who the kidnapper is.

    'No Exit' has plenty of twists and surprises in store for its audience, and I found the developing events captivating. I was glued to the screen and on the edge of my seat for the entire duration of the movie. Havana Rose Liu carried the film with ease as Darby with the character's survival skills put to the test.
  • abigailcampbell-76606 - 28 September 2023
    Promising at first, then went downhill fast.
    I love a good psychological thriller. However, the bad guy was outed super fast which is sometimes okay. But everything else just went downhill fast. There's an interesting twist but it didn't really add much to the overall plot. And the last 20 - 30 minutes were just filled with terrible decision making and dialogue. Bringing it back around, I love thrillers and horror (not that this is a horror film), but I hate when films add action just to add to the horror, thrilling aspect. Especially when what lead up to said events makes no sense. I want the suspense to be realistic as possible. Not just thrown in there because it leaves you on the edge of your seat. The ending just ended up pissing me off due to bad judgement.
  • tmntvspr-419-43420 - 31 March 2023
    Just read the book. My God... B.A.D.
    Positives: it was color grated properly. Shot composure showed promise. Great source material. Great concept.

    Mixed: Havana Liu is very emotive and sympathetic but she was ADR'ed so poorly. Little girl did her best with what she was given. I feel like only they read the source material.

    Negatives: They added exterior driving CGI and a cop run in which cost unnecessary money that should have been used for another draft. A interior car shot of her chugging a generic energy drink, glancing at a phone with a text saying, "mom is in X hospital, thought you should know. Aneurysm. She's okay for now" would add tension, stakes and save you 20 minutes of film and paying extra actors in the beginning. Use those 20 minutes for better development.

    I'm not a big reader. In fact, when I do, I often prefer the movie. This movie changed that. Don't watch the movie. It's awful. Smart people are made irrelevant and dumb. Back stories are added that actually take away from the characters.

    Just read the book. It'll take 3-4 hours to read completely and it's more thrilling and will fly by faster than the 95 minutes this film was.

    Now for spoilers.. Darby being an addict added nothing. It took away from her. Instead of believing she's a bad person for doing bad things as a kid, she's blatantly "damaged". She just needs the Jared Leto tattoo now.

    Every idea that she comes up to get the upper hand in the book, she either stumbles like a Benny Hill character, or the VILLIAN offers it to her.

    In the book, the Villian is a construction worker who brought a nail gun that has been modified. In the movie, he finds it next to a HOLE IN THE BUILDING and just apparently knows how to modify it. Later, the VILLIANS (who both have used the hole in the building by now) can't figure out how to get in the Building.

    Book: a ceiling window is broken (okay, difficult to access) Movie: ground floor access point NEXT TO THE VILLAIN and he goes around to the windowed front and is surprised when they expect him.

    Darby actress is the best one (Sorry Allstate/President Palmer) but her ADR is over done, everyone's is.

    I honestly feel like the book plot would have a cheaper budget.

    Cop shows up? How about the protagonist brandishes a weapon?! Dumb.

    Oohh.. she went 11 days sober to 48 days.. with a brief hiatus doing a bump to remove a nail. Big character development moment here. It feels like a film student was checking boxes.

    Good, or important scenes in the film were rushed. Character development was abandoned and replaced with blind luck.

    Reading the book I could imagine a great movie. This feels like it whomever wrote and directed the movie disliked the material.

    The material is better than this film. If they changed the film to be different, fine, but add. Don't subtract. Give me a new take on a scene, don't combine 45 minutes of tension development into 2 lines of dialog from a character who shouldn't be helping.
  • SnoopyStyle - 20 December 2022
    tight little thriller
    Darby (Havana Rose Liu) is not allowed to leave rehab. She gets news of her mother's hospitalization. No one wants her to visit her dying mother. She escapes and steals a car. A snow storm closes the road and she's forced to stop at a visitor's center with a group of strangers. While Darby is walking outside looking for a cell signal, she finds a kidnapped girl in the back of a van.

    This is a tight little stuck-in-one-place thriller. While the rehab is interesting, it could be shortened. It needs to get to the place as soon as possible. Once the movie gets there, the story becomes very simple and very compelling. The one big question is whether someone with a bigger name should play the lead. Liu fits the role very well and I'm not questioning her acting. She's great, but a bigger name would sell the movie. Her smaller name keeps this as a smaller thriller.
  • Kitahito - 17 October 2022
    A promising story ruined by the breathtaking idiocy of the characters.
    First of all, I have to state that the story builds up quiet well, until the point when Darby discovers the girl in the van. There is a lot of potential in this scenario. But from then on, apart from Ed's decisions, no one has a single rational moment in the movie. And I am not exaggerating with this statement. Of course, it can be argued that people behave illogically under great pressure... but to that extent? Reading the eulogistic reviews all around and seeing how many people praised the script, I don't understand: what were you happy about? You cheer because of the arbitrarily and illogically introduced twists, such as the two kidnappers pretending not to know each other just so the big reveal can happen? What did they gain from this? I mean the characters. It's 90% risk, 10% reward, and I'm very generous. Wasn't anyone suspicious that they arrived at the same time, or that there was only one car in the parking lot, but in principle they came separately? What advantage did they hope for from this, or more precisely: what advantage did Ash hope for from this (since he came up with it, obviously) when his irresponsible, mentally unstable brother needs constant supervision? You have to make sure that he doesn't snap at every moment, but of course, pretend that you don't know each other, it won't be suspicious if you have to call him aside to calm him down or something! You could say that you are on a road trip together or something, it's fairly common thing that two brothers are traveling together, for God's sake!

    And this is just one of the many stupid decisions that make gaping holes in the script, but yes, the creators really did a wonderful job of being able to impresses people with bad taste who are unable to notice the glaring mistakes! Why wouldn't you tell the company about the armed kidnapper, or the hole on the bathroom wall, when the reverse hostage situation escalates? Why wouldn't you free the girl, or take a photo of her and attach it to a message sent to the police? Run away? Nah! Lets just play Assassin's Creed in a parking lot for the better part of the movie! Also, what are the chances that the cleaning lady and the kidnappers meet at a random roadside rest stop? Why send out only one patrol in a situation like this, and the most incompetent one of all? What the hell do you think when you're swinging a loaded gun around? You're being held at gunpoint, in the United States! You do know that a nail gun isn't a bloody UZI, right? It can't be used like a submachine gun. Why would you check if someone is dead? Come on mate! Just enjoy the burning remnants of the only shellter you have in a snowstorm, which you destroyed by the way! Why would you stop anywhere when you're committing a kidnapping a children in the first place? The blizzard is exactly what would help you avoid getting caught. Come on, get everyone's attention by walking out to the van every 5 minutes? Of course! Not disarm the armed attacker who is nailed to the wall and very sluggishly try to drive him away? Obviously! Betraying your own husband and gassing your ally, then letting the gunmen in to kill you? Naturally! After all, who else would you trust but two desperate, cornered kidnappers who have nothing to lose? They are very, very fair partners who always keep their word and won't kill you the first damn opportunity they have! Oh, by the way, the little girl who fled into the forest will surely come back at Darby's call if her two kidnappers are standing behind her. Good plan. As well as blinding said kidnappers with a flashlight and expecting to survive unharmed. The blinded gunman standing half a meter away from you will surely not shoot you and miss! Oh, and you need both of you to chase her around, splitting up to secure the building if not important! And yeah Darby darling, send the little girl to walk very slowly across the room while a schizophrenic brute holds a gun at you, with instructions to shoot if anyone moves, so you can have some drug to instantly ease the pain of the nail removal! I'm sure he will not notice, and he won't, because he's about as observant as a pile of pebbles. Again, a splendid plan, indeed! Maybe persuade him to listen, you don't want to go to jail, let us go and then maybe you can get away...etc? Nope. You'd rather send the girl to her death, after all you only risked your life to save her, so you can... achieve what? Maybe grab the guy and negotiate with the other, less reasonable guy? You do know that there is also the option of disposing of people, right? If you're afraid of killing them, of course. (Darby is not, as she would smash their heads in with a hammer without a second tought, but just for the sake of argument, let's assume she don't wanna kill anybody.) A person shot in the knee is no longer a threat, and you can drink coffee next to them until the police arrive. But no, that would be too sensible a solution. Maybe she wanna get the screwdriver kill achievement or something. I dunno, I feel I'm losing brain cells just by thinking about this stupidity.

    Should I write a few more pages, or has the message gone through? This movie is a disaster in terms of writing. Convenient solution after convenient solution, created complications and absurd conflicts (Ash's fixation on the suicide of Darby's father is outright absurd), forced twists, characters with negative IQ who couldn't behave lifelike if their lives depended on it, and it did, but they were too stupid to notice. Let's leave the X number of stranger gets stuck in a house and a conflict unfolds in which approx. Everyone dies type of film for Tarantino, because such quacks like these only know how to spoil good materials.
  • J_Batek_II - 28 August 2022
    Well Written Story With An Ending That Will Leave You Unsatisfied.
    You have to be in the mood to watch one of these low-budget B horror movies/thrillers, so you already know what you are getting when you commit to watch. As far as "strangers share public space at night and someone is a criminal" plots go, this one is better than most. However, when it has all been said and the 90 minutes are done, you will be left saying, "Well, that just happened. I watched that movie. That was a movie." Nothing particularly memorable here, and a flat ending. Blah.

    RealReview Posting Scoring Criteria: Acting: 1/1; Casting: 1/1; Directing: 1/1; Story: 1/1; Writing/Screenplay: 0.5/1; Total Base Score = 4.5

    Modifiers (+ or -): none.

    Total RealReview Rating: 4.5 (rounded up to 5 for IMDB)