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Film review: Ditched has a whole lot of horror going on

Talented cast helps to keep filmmaker's writing/directing debut from going into the – you know

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At the very end of the credits for Ditched, writer/director Christopher Donaldson includes a shout-out to John Carpenter “for the inspiration.” Also to Steven Spielberg, David Fincher, Eli Roth, James Gunn and eight others.

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I get it: We’re all standing on the shoulders of giants. But it does feel as though the 86 minutes that preceded this list might have benefited from fewer muses. Not that Ditched feels particularly derivative. It’s just that there’s so much going on, it’s hard to settle back and get into the film’s groove. It’s too groovy!

The action starts suddenly, with paramedic Melina (Marika Sila) waking up in the back of a crashed, overturned ambulance. A patient, strapped to a gurney, begs for help. The ambulance’s driver is gravely injured. So are the two cops in a nearby wrecked police cruiser, which also contains a panicked criminal. How did we get here?

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It’s a clever opening gambit, especially since it avoids the necessity of staging the crash, which I’m guessing might be beyond this Edmonton-shot feature’s budget. As Melina starts to piece things together, questions mount up faster than answers. Chief among them: What are those strange, shadowy creatures in the nearby woods? Wookiees? Yetis? That guy from Toni Erdmann?

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Whatever they are, it feels like Ditched suffers from reverse Jaws syndrome. In Spielberg’s classic, the shark famously stays hidden for much of the movie. Here, the furry monsters seem to be all over the place, all the time. Their motivation, when revealed, opens another can of worms.

I’m loath to say more about the twisty plot, which features numerous reveals and more than a few red herrings. (If there was a reason behind the shots of wildflowers at the end of numerous scenes, it escaped me.)

But I will say that Sila, who also appears in the TV series Tribal, is a strong performer, possibly even better than the material she’s working with. As the protagonist, she’s reason enough to stick with the story. And Mackenzie Gray, as a bad guy who stumbles in midway through the movie, is equally watchable, even if he doesn’t seem to be on the same page as his costar.

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“Quick and painful,” he bellows at one point, referring to someone’s imminent death, before catching himself: “No! Slow and painful!” Which had me wondering: Is quick and painful even a thing?

Donaldson has a busy resume that includes directing episodes of the 2018 series Necessary Evil, writing for video games, and storyboarding for more than two dozen projects, everything from The Man in the High Castle to The Flash. I didn’t love this, his writing/directing debut. But I loved where it was coming from, and I’d be eager to see what he and his posse of inspirers get up to next.

Ditched is available Jan. 18 on demand, and Feb. 15 on Blu-ray.

2.5 stars out of 5

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