Review: ‘Death Trip’ is a gem of indie filmmaking

A low budget is never an excuse not to deliver top-notch storytelling. If you know what you’re doing, and have a keen eye for shot composition, mood-building, and character, you can literally do anything these days. Tapping into his savings, at least according to the screener’s introductory home screen, director James Watts works absolute magic behind the camera with Death Trip, co-written with Kelly Kay Hurcomb, a co-star on the film, with a patchwork of mumblecore, exploitation, slasher, and psychological terror. Its murderous mayhem at its finest, and there’s a certain artistic crunch to it, lo-fi and grimy, punctuated with irresistible chemistry among the cast and a tour de force finale.

Death Trip opens on a bloody mess of b-roll footage, and a woman’s garbled, emotionally-wrought cries set the scene. It’s a trademark trick to suck in the viewer and works to great creepy effect, quickly cutting away to a neon-soaked party, which finds Kelly (Hurcomb) hooking up in the bathroom with her boyfriend Glenn (Brett Howie). Later in the night, she spies him slyly flirting with another woman, sending her into a fury. She decides to leave the party on her own and wanders through wet city streets, soon finding herself in the path of an unknown assailant. Come to find out, it was just a dream, or so we think, and this story device allows the viewer to peer into Kelly’s perhaps troubled mind.

Along with a group of friends Tatyana (Tatyana Olal), Melina (Melina Trimarchi), and Garrett (Garrett Johnson), she heads reluctantly to Garrett’s hometown for a weekend getaway in his father’s old property. They should have known that you never travel out into the middle of nowhere and expect to survive. Once they arrive, it becomes clear that the little rural community is just a little off. It’s never quite explicit; it’s the kind of under-the-skin tension that fills the air. There’s even an urban legend about Garrett’s neighbors and how the father mutilated the mother and now abuses the daughter. James Watts uses all these common horror beats to immerse the viewer in a very strange world, indeed.

Bit by bit, Death Trip unravels, and it’s nearly always through the perspective of Kelly, an unreliable narrator. Wary about the next door neighbor, Tatyana expresses her anxieties and wishes to leave, but Garrett suggests a night out before calling it quits. At a local restaurant, the group meets a band of local 20-somethings, who invite them to a party at another friend’s house. It’s a bit suspect, naturally, and you fully expect things to go down on unknown territory. James Watts is only toying with you, though, setting up particular dominoes that actually don’t end up topping over, but then he tosses you a curve ball much later than expected. It’s the next morning when shit really hits the fan, and the group must combat a deranged psychopath.

The film’s look and feel certainly scream “micro-budget,” but the effectiveness lies with the cast’s intense electricity together — it’d be surprising if there were not an element of improv during filming. You totally buy into their friendship and the organic emotional friction that eventually explodes like fireworks. Perhaps what you think you see is not what is actually happening, and the finale turns the tables in such a thrilling way that’ll elicit gasps and maybe a few shrieks. It’s an absolute gem of indie filmmaking.

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