Mickey Keating (director)
(studio)
18 (certificate)
83 (length)
10 June 2022 (released)
07 June 2022
There are bigger things at work in Offseason when in a flashback we see Marie Aldrich (Jocelin Donahue) arguing with lawyers that her mother’s will has been changed. It now specifies that she wants to be buried in her home town, a place she never wanted to return to.
We know this as Marie, after receiving a letter telling her that her mother Ava (Melora Walters) grave has been desecrated, is returning to her Lone Palm Beach home town. Enlisting her reluctant boyfriend George (Joe Swanberg) they travel to the remote island which is only accessible by one road bridge that will be raised, until the season starts again.
Against the clock the pair find the grave; virtually destroyed, Marie then meets the kindly looking Miss Emily (April Linscott), and loses George, finds him and they go to a local bar with the token weirdo punters, apart from one although that’s to give them a warning, not to hang around.
Aiming to get off the island before the deadline, George and Marie are involved in a car accident from which Marie walks away and George goes missing. They don’t get off the island and they are left to grapple with now white-eyed townsfolk and a curse.
This may appear frantic but Offseason – directed and written by Mickey Keating - is anything but being a carefully paced creeper that should keep the viewer’s attention to the end. It is something of a slowburn and for a good proportion of the film there’s a lot asked of Donahue, as the sole person on the screen. Which she does very well; conflicted by confusion, anger and fear. The flashbacks of fights and abuse with her mother flesh out the story satisfactorily.
If it’s not terribly original the great strength of Offseason is that it looks and sounds magnificent. It is for the most part drenched in grey, ruddy hues, almost colourless at times. This may be a stereotypical isolated coastal community nevertheless it is effective and heightens the feeling of an oncoming menace making the full use of colour that much more effective later on.
The visuals, and the overall mood of gloom and doom, are underscored by Shayfer James’s music (which appears to be his first score) and the sound design.
Offseason will be available on Shudder from 10 June.
