An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at director Damien Power’s 2022 Hulu film, No Exit
While stuck at a rest stop, a woman struggling with addiction discovers a kidnapped child in a van and must figure out who among her is the kidnapper.
Is it Scary?
Horror-wise not at all but the movie does have some pretty suspenseful moments that can count as heart-pounding. Don’t expect to get any nightmares when it’s all said and done.
Detailed Plot:
The film opens at a rehab center where one of the patients, Jade, is telling a story of her struggle while our main character Darby (played by Havana Rose Liu), also in the group, rolls her eyes. Darby then reveals that she’s heard Jade tell that same story several times in other rehab centers and that they’re wasting their time. So Darby is coming off pretty unlikable but, hey, let’s see where this goes.
A staff member, Mike, then walks in and says he has an urgent call for Darby. On the line is someone named Joe who tells Darby her mother had a brain aneurysm and is in a hospital in Salt Lake City. He then gives Darby her sister’s, Devon, phone number to call.
But since Darby is in rehab, Mike prevents her from making a call without permission from her doctor. He also points out Darby has lied multiple times in the past about regarding “family emergencies.”
Unfortunately for Darby her doctor is not available at the moment and since it’s Friday he may not get back to them till Monday. That night Darby visits Jade’s room and asks to borrow her secret phone.
Darby is able to contact Devon but Devon tells her not to come to the hospital as she cannot deal with her issues and their mother’s emergency at the same time. Heartbroken, Darby decides to take things into her own hands and breaks out of the rehab center.
She then breaks into Mike’s car and, while looking for a key, finds a small bag of cocaine. She then uses a screwdriver to start the car and drives off. While on the road she attempts to make multiple calls and send multiple messages to Devon but she refuses to respond. A strong blizzard rolls in and a short time later the roads are completely covered in snow.
Devon finally responds and Darby pulls over to read the messages, unfortunately they’re not what she hoped.
Darby debates snorting the cocaine she found in the car but falls asleep. She’s woken up by a cop at her window who tells her the roads are now closed due to the storm and tells her to go back to town or head to the visitor’s center 200 yards away.
Probably because she doesn’t want to go back to where she just stole a car Darby elects to go to the visitor’s center. There she sees four others, one man listening to music wearing headphones, another sleeping in the corner, and finally, husband and wife, Ed and Sandi (played by Dennis Haysbert and Dale Dickey respectively) sitting at the center table.
Darby heads to the woman’s bathroom for privacy to call Devon but finds it under construction with a large hole that leads outside boarded up with plywood. In the men’s bathroom, she realizes she has no phone service, and once again debates taking the drugs.
She chooses not to and serves herself a cup of coffee instead. After finding out there’s no WiFi she overhears Ed, walking back in from outside, tell Sandi he was able to get a bar of service for about ten seconds by a tree in the middle of the lot.
Darby goes outside and proceeds to walk nowhere near the tree for service. But, as she’s walking she hears a loud bang and muffled screams coming from a van. Looking through one of the back windows she sees a little girl (played by Mila Harris) bound with duct tape inside.
Unable to get into the van, Darby takes a picture of the Nevada license plates and then realizes she has no idea who is the owner of the van. She can’t trust anyone and the mystery starts!
Back in her car she attempts to call 911 but the call fails. Through her mirror she sees Ed walk outside and she slides the screwdriver in her pocket just in case. Turns out Ed assumed that since Darby was outside for so long it meant she got service… or at least that’s his excuse.
Can’t trust anyone!
A few minutes later everyone is back inside and Sandi thinks everyone should get to know each other since they’re stuck there anyway. Ed offers they all play a game of cards and maybe gamble. We find out the man listening to music is Lars (played by David Rysdahl) and the man who was sleeping is named Ash (played by Danny Ramirez).
Since Lars doesn’t gamble he recommends the group play Bullshit and to his surprise the group agrees. Lars appears to be an outcast acting a bit wired and tweaky AKA the most suspicious. Ash comes off as the cool jock type but at the same time he appears to be too cool like it’s a cover for something evil.
Ed and Sandi are a couple so if they kidnapped the girl they’re acting awfully non-suspicious and relaxed. Of course, since Ed seems to be taking charge that could just be his way of controlling the situation plus he seems to be giving Darby some suspicious looks. But, it might be a fake-out by the writer and he might be completely innocent.
Lars explains the rules: first the cards get evenly divided, the person next to the dealer puts down one a random card face down and announces its number to the group. The next person puts down either the number before or after, once again face down and announces it to the group.
At this point someone can call out bullshit if they believe the person is lying. For example if person B announces they put down 3 Kings but person C has 2 kings in their hand then they should call bullshit. The cards are then flipped face up and if person B was lying they pick up all the cards, if person B was telling the truth, person C picks up all the cards.
The game ends when someone is able to get rid of all their cards. It’s a game fitting the mystery of the movie… or any movie with a whodunit aspect to it really.
The game starts and Darby asks everyone where they’re from in an attempt to suss out who lives in Nevada and possibly owns the van. Turns out Lars is heading home to Nevada.
We also find out a few interesting things about each of our characters, Ed is a gambler and an ex-marine, just like Darby’s father. Sandy, his wife, was a nurse and is taking Ed to Reno on a surprise vacation. Ash is from San Francisco and headed to New Denver, Canada to visit family.
Sandi quickly wins the game causing Lars to have an angry outburst, throwing his cards on the ground. This pretty much solidifies that Lars is the kidnapper in Darby’s mind and she leaves for the women’s bathroom that is under construction.
There she attempts to call 911 but, once again, the call fails. She then attempts to send a text message to 911 with the picture of the license plate but the message fails to send.
With no other choice Darby grabs some tools and a box cutter from the tool cart and removes the plywood from the wall. She then heads outside and breaks into the van to help the girl.
Before she can cut the duct tape around her hands, Darby sees a medical bracelet around the girl’s wrist telling us she has Addison’s disease meaning a peak in adrenaline can cause death.
The door of the van then opens and Darby hides under some covers in the backseat. Lars enter the van and talks to the girl like her being tied up in the back isn’t a problem and just a normal thing. So the mystery is over in this mystery thriller. We’re only 32 minutes into the movie and 15 minutes from when the mystery was introduced.
Lars starts the van to turn on the heat and we find out he’s taking the girl, named Jay, to someone he refers to as “Uncle Kenny”. He then realizes the cardboard in the back window has been removed and goes to tape it back up. Darby readies her boxcutter but Lars doesn’t see her, though she notices he is carrying a gun.
With Jay continuing to cry, Lars comforts her and tells her she’ll be alright. He then remembers he wanted to bring her some snacks and other treats from inside and leaves the van. He appears to be a little slow on the take and somewhat harmless, making me wonder if he has an accomplice, which could only be Ash or maybe Ed and Sandi are both accomplices.
With not much time before Lars returns, Darby tells Jay she’ll come back for her and she leaves the van. Before Lars can get back in the van he notices footprints in the snow and panics.
Darby crawls back in through the opening in the bathroom just as Ash knocks on the door to make sure she’s alright. She pulls him in and starts to tell him what is going on but before she can finish, Lars busts in. Acting quickly, Darby starts kissing Ash and Lars leaves them.
Darby tells Ash everything and he devises a plan which requires Darby to head outside drawing Lars’s attention. When Lars goes outside after Darby, Ash will tell Ed and, hoping Ed has a gun, they’ll both attack Lars from behind. Just in case Ed doesn’t have a gun, Ash grabs a nail gun from the tool bench.
Reluctantly agreeing to the plan, Darby heads outside and enters the van. She then rips the duct tape off of Jay’s face and tells her they’re going to get her out of there. Jay cries, asking where the men are, telling us there’s more than one. Jay then confirms there’s two men. Darby looks outside to see Ash talking to Lars.
We find out Ash is the brains of the kidnapping duo and he tells Lars they now have to do damage control. He also takes the gun from Lars and gives him the modified nail gun that will now fire with lethal force.
The two open the van to find only Jay and then see Darby running back towards the visitor’s center. Lars follows after her and Ash runs inside, avoiding questions from the suspicious Ed. In the hallway by the bathroom Ash catches Darby and points the gun at her.
Ash takes her phone, deletes the failed text message to police, and questions Darby about her life to assess her as a threat AKA a sneaky writer way to give the audience come more backstory. We find out after the Gulf War, Darby’s father killed himself and Ash then taunts her for it.
We also find out the reason for the ransom was money as Jay’s family is apparently rich but Ash and Lars were unaware of her illness. Meanwhile Lars has returned inside and very obviously lies to Ed about where Darby is, causing Ed to head outside to find her. Not finding anything he signals confusion to Sandi back inside.
Sandi then goes searching for Darby inside, finding Ash and her together but does not see Ash hide the gun. She requests to talk to Darby alone to which Ash agrees. Before he leaves he kisses Darby and whispers that he will kill everyone if she says anything.
Though Sandi is suspicious and tries to get Darby to tell her what’s going on, Darby dodges the questions. The two then join the rest of the group at the front table. Back in the van we see Darby has left the box cutter and Jay has used it to free herself.
Conveniently Lars, Ash, and Darby are the only ones whose seats face the window and they each notice Jay is now outside the van. Maintaining his composure, Ash signals for Lars to go out there as Jay runs off into the woods.
Darby heads to the bathroom and Ash follows behind soon after. This gives Darby enough time to grab a hammer from the tool cart and attack Ash when he enters the bathroom. The two struggle causing Ash to not notice his keys flying out of his jacket. He quickly gains the upper hand and slams Darby’s head down onto the ground.
Before he can strangle her, a worried Lars crawls through the hole and tells Ash he can’t find Jay. Knowing Jay won’t come if they call out to her, Ash forces Darby to accompany them into the woods to look for her.
During the search Lars tells Darby that he and Ash are brothers, each adopted by “Uncle Kenny” and that Kenny will give Jay a new home. This tells us that Ash lied to Darby earlier and their intention is to sell Jay, not ransom her.
Following Jay’s footprints in the snow Darby sees an opportunity to escape and walks along a trail with no footprints. She then flashes the light in the brother’s eyes and jumps down a hill, rolling down and crashing into a tree.
As she jumps Ash fires a shot blindly into the dark alerting Ed and Sandi back at the visitor’s center. Ed heads outside and spots the unconscious Jay in the snow bringing her back into the center. Sandi spots the medical bracelet and tells Ed, Jay is in an adrenal crisis.
Darby throws a flashlight deeper into the woods creating a distraction allowing her to run around the brothers and get back to the visitor’s center where she tells Ed and Sandi what is going on. Ash and Lars arrive outside of the center and yell out to the group to give them the girl or they’ll kill everyone.
Ed barricades the front door and yells out to the kidnapping duo that he will shoot them if they try to come inside. Though he doesn’t actually have a gun, the brothers don’t know for sure and the plan buys them some time.
Ash then yells to the group claiming he has Jay’s medication and she will die without it. Sandi, on the verge of tears, confirms this and thinks they should let them take Jay. Ed and Darby disagree and Darby remembers she has the keys to the van. Ed then tells Ash he’ll trade him the meds for the keys.
Ash and Lars go to the van and instead of getting the medicine the two grab a plastic gas canister. Inside the group debate whether the two are crazy enough to burn the place down. Ed then gives his keys to Darby and tells her to bury the keys outside through the bathroom hole.
Sandi then tries to convince Ed to just give Jay to them as she thinks they’re not going to make it out alive. Ed is steadfast in his decision and tells her they’ve been in worse situations before but they are not giving up the girl. So, again I ask, why isn’t he the main character of this movie?
Outside Lars, who is unsure of the plan, has poured gasoline all over the front of the center while inside Darby has returned with tools to use as weapons and Sandi grabs pepper spray from her purse. Ash starts a countdown as both groups continue to debate their actions.
As Ash gets to one on his countdown, Jay wakes up and recognizes Sandi as her maid. We then see a flashback filling us in that Sandi was part of the kidnapping. We see that Jay used to humiliate Sandi into doing dances that she would then post on social media. During her kidnapping Sandi was upstairs, heard the whole thing, and did nothing.
Sandi then lied to the police, telling them she was upstairs vacuuming with headphones on and didn’t hear anything. We then see Sandi on the phone with Ash where he tells her they couldn’t find her medicine and now need her to come with a new supply or else they’ll kill Jay and she won’t get her cut of the ransom.
Back in the present, Sandi yells out to Ash and Lars that Ed doesn’t have a gun, she then pepper sprays Darby. Ed asks “what the fuck is going on” which is honestly an appropriate reaction.
Sandi reveals the bank called her, telling her they had no more money or savings left and this was her way of fixing it. It’s implied Ed lost it all gambling. Sandi then removes the barricade from the door allowing the brothers to enter.
As Sandi administers Jay’s medicine we find out Sandi met the brothers online under the agreement they would ransom Jay for $2 million. Darby tells Sandi they’re going to traffic Jay not ransom her which Ash confirms and Lars obliviously calls it “giving her a better home.” Ash also implies whoever they work for will kill them if they don’t bring Jay and says it was never about the money.
Realizing she fucked up, Sandi starts to break down. Ash demands the keys but Ed tells Darby not to say anything as they will kill them all regardless. Ash then shoots Ed in the heart, killing him.
Sandi lets out a wail and attempts to pepper spray Ash but Lars jumps in front. Ash then shoots her in the shoulder. Sandi drags herself to Ed’s side, holding his lifeless hand as Ash shoots her in the head, killing her.
Ash then attacks Darby before she can grab the pepper spray and he uses the nail gun to pin her to the wall. He then picks up Lars and takes him to the bathroom to wash out the pepper spray.
Seeing a hammer nearby, Darby calls out to Jay to grab it. She grabs it just as Ash and the clearly shaken Lars return. Ash demands the keys but Darby refuses. Her phone then receives a notification which Ash sees and we find out Darby’s mother has died.
The phone then gets another notification that the police are on their way. Turns out that message from earlier did send at some point, phones are weird.
Now on a timer, Ash threatens to use the nail gun on Jay if Darby doesn’t reveal where the keys are. Still shocked by the news of her mother’s death it takes a little bit for Darby to finally tell him she hid the keys outside.
Ash gives Lars the gun and tells him to point it at Darby and to shoot if she tries anything which I think would be pretty hard since she’s still nailed to the wall. Darby then tells Jay to go turn out the lights and Lars starts to freak out wanting Jay to sit back down. Darby tells Lars he’s not a killer and to not shoot a child.
While Lars is distracted, Darby pulls out the cocaine in her pocket and debates taking it only to toss it away. Which makes sense since her journey is clearly overcoming addiction and showing that even after her mom has died and is, herself facing death, she would still choose to not succumb to her addiction.
OH WAIT NO, she snorts the cocaine!
In a truly what the fuck moment, Darby snorts the cocaine with no hesitation meaning her entire character arc has been thrown out of the window. Before this moment she was a character who was overcoming an internal struggle of addiction while dealing with outside forces that would tempt her to lose that internal struggle, you know, like a well-written character. After this moment, she’s just a character.
Of course this movie could still turn her character arc around, so let’s continue.
Jay reaches the lights and turns them off. Lars then grabs her and during their struggle, Darby uses the hammer to pull out the nail pinning her to the wall. As Lars turns the lights back on, Darby hits him with the hammer causing him to accidentally fire the gun alerting Ash, who has found the keys.
Ash runs back in with the nail gun to find Darby holding his brother at gunpoint. While he points the nail gun at Darby, Jay pops out and hits his arm with the hammer causing him to accidentally fire. The nail hits Lars right in the forehead.
While Ash attends to his brother’s injury, telling him he’s going to be alright, Darby and Jay exit the visitor’s center and run to the car. Back inside, Lars slips on Ed’s blood and lands face first on the ground, which is a problem as there was a nail sticking out of his face. The fall drives the nail into his brain and kills him.
Just as Darby gets the car started, a distraught Ash exits the center shooting multiple nails into the car causing a tire to pop and the car to crash. He then sets fire to the center and heads to Darby’s car. Before he can get there, a cop arrives and orders him to step away from the car.
Darby opens the door and shoots Ash in the shoulder dropping him to the ground. She then exits the car and points the gun at him, while walking towards him, directly in the eyeline of the cop who is shouting at her to drop the gun.
Why doesn’t she stay out of his eyeline behind the car? Why not shout to the cop that Ash is the bad guy? Why not put her hands up to show she’s not a threat and the cop can approach? Shhhh. Unsurprisingly the cop shoots Darby in the stomach causing her to fall to the ground and drop the gun directly next to Ash.
Ash grabs the gun and shoots the cop, he attempts to shoot Darby but the gun is out of bullets. He then grabs the nail gun and walks over to the cop to take his gun but not before shooting him multiple times with nails, killing him.
Ash then returns to Darby with the cop’s gun and, instead of just shooting her immediately like he tried to do earlier, he monologues, taunting her about her father’s suicide. This gives Darby enough time to pull out the screwdriver she had in her pocket from earlier and stab him in the neck, killing him.
As Jay calls out for Darby from the car, Darby drags herself over to the cops body and uses his radio to call for help. We then fade to black.
We flashforward to sometime later and we see Darby in rehab on her 48th day which, while good, loses all its impact when you remember she took cocaine to overcome her struggles. Darby then gets a visitor who is revealed to be her sister hinting at a happy ending so…. yay cocaine?
No, that can’t be right.
Review:
I have a couple of problems with this movie and one of them isn’t even the actual movie’s fault.
First the movie is advertised as a mystery but after 30 minutes the mystery is solved, luckily there are a few well-done twists that make it worth it. I imagine the director didn’t have a lot of control over how the film is advertised and Hulu’s marketing team(?) took the reigns on that one, but that’s just my guess.
Second is the cocaine scene, not because a character snorted cocaine or took drugs but because it completely betrays Darby’s character arc. At the end we see Darby in rehab 48 days clean showing she’s overcoming her addiction but we, the audience, didn’t see her work for it because she took the cocaine earlier in the movie.
There was no internal struggle that was overcome. Had the movie not presented that struggle earlier or shown that she was in rehab at the end that cocaine scene wouldn’t be a big deal but showing both those scenes is sort of like hand-waving the problem to force a happier ending.
Do both these things ruin the movie? No, the movie is still entertaining just nothing extraordinary. The acting by all the actors and the dialogue feels believable except for a few times it feels forced just to give us some backstory.
This might be one of those movies that you only remember in a few months as “what was that movie where the main character snorted cocaine to save a little girl?” Is that bad? Not really since you’ll also remember it was entertaining while you watched it.
Cast IMDB