Review: ‘GO/DON’T GO’ scrawls poetic letter about grief

Grief has long served as the backbone to many of horror’s greatest achievements. Immense loss courses like venom through such films as Don’t Look Now, The Babadook, and Hereditary, and the viewer is sucked into worlds not unlike their own. The real world is as brutal as it seems onscreen. Alex Knapp’s directorial debut GO/DON’T GO fixates on such all-consuming sadness, adeptly submerging the viewer into a suffocating pool of despair and paranoia, with craftsmanship that’s both crisp and moody.

Knapp, also the script writer, stars as Adam, who finds himself wandering through a post-apocalyptic world. He continues about his normal routine: he wakes up before dawn, goes to work, and back home again. Methodical revelations inch along, but it is through such a world-absorbing quality that Knapp is able to toy with the viewer. Things are never exactly as they seem, and as Adam’s grip on reality merges with the past, seen only in fleeting snapshots, you begin to understand that the film has something much more profound to say.

Initially, it appears as though Adam is losing time, and he often finds himself meandering through lost memories, always centered around the love of his life, a young woman simply known as K Olivia Luccardi, Channel Zero, It Follows). Perhaps, it’s his way of coping with a decaying world, or he really is going insane. While he attempts to hold onto the present, he keeps meticulous track of his daily activities ⏤ whether it’s progress made on a broken-down truck or tabulating broken light bulbs in his house ⏤ in small notebooks, and he even leaves bizarre voicemails for himself, as if he keeps forgetting his life’s sole mission. Early on, he comes across a page scrawled with the words “Get to the mountain” in sharp, thick lines, and this simple instruction becomes the film’s entire driving force.

GO/DON’T GO builds and builds before its coursing volcanic core completely boils over. Yes, he does make it to the mountain, but it’s not what you think it is. The emotional, fiery finale reads as one man’s inward journey through and out of grief ⏤ and set against a Dooms Day backdrop, it allows Knapp to get his hands dirty without being contrained to convention or expectation. The filmmaker also allows the storytelling to remain ambigious enough so the viewer can slip their own misery right into its hollow exterior and surmise their own meaning. In fact, it is nevery fully revealed wheather Adam is mourning a breakup or a tragic death; either way, pain and loneliness feel much the same.

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