Ooh, another Shudder exclusive! And even better, this one's from a director I know - Ryuhei Kitamura, who also directed the wonderful Versus and the surprisingly good Midnight Meat Train (and the WWE Studios film No One Lives, but we shall get to that another time). Since we had such a surprisingly good time with Found Footage 3D, let's go and have a look at Downrange.
Six college students are carpooling together when they suffer a flat tyre while travelling down a very isolated road in the middle of nowhere. While changing the tyre, it is discovered that the flat was not an accident - someone had shot out the tyre as they drove down the road. The person who discovers this doesn't have the time to tell the other five about this, however, before the hidden sniper blows a hole right through his head. The surviving students find themselves pinned down behind their car, unable to move away from it because the sniper will pick them off, and with no mobile phone signals so they are unable to call for help. And the mystery sniper is very, very patient. Will the surviving students be able to escape from the sniper scope, and how many of them will be left even if they do?
The written plot of Downrange fits nicely between that of Versus - Yakuza kung-fu zombies with guns - and that of Midnight Meat Train - photographer discovers secret society/creatures living under New York, fed by Vinnie Jones on late-night trains - in terms of explaining it to others. It's clearly a particular talent of Kitamura's to be able to take a very simple premise and make a whole movie about it, and it's one that I like a lot as well. So I enjoyed the basic premise of Downrange for the same reason I actually liked the very first Saw film - there's just something about a movie with a very straightforward plot and a single set that really rings my bell. And there's something realistically relatable about the situation the cast of the movie find themselves in, because it's the kind of thing a lot of people have probably imagined at some point while on a long car journey in the middle of nowhere (or maybe that's just me...). The idea of an unseen sniper calmly and methodically picking you and everyone around you off is terrifying enough - being utterly isolated and unable to call for help just makes it so much worse.
If you've seen any of Kitamura's other films mentioned above, you'll also know that his films tend to be very... wet, and Downrange is no exception. Bullet wounds are shown in loving close up (cameras zooming out from inside of them, in fact), blood and brains splatter all over any nearby surfaces, and characters react quite realistically to having holes shot in them from a distance - ie. they fall over and scream a lot. So if that's your cup of tea then this film definitely delivers there as well. In fact, perhaps it delivers a little too much, as since we're so used to the "clean" bullet wounds of most films, these ones seem almost over-the-top in their gruesomeness. No neat little holes in foreheads with dainty little blood trickles here.
Downrange also goes through protagonists like cats go through cardboard boxes. The film starts with us following one character, but just as we're starting to get attached the bullets start flying and we move on to another one, and then another. The six characters we start with apparently hadn't even met before this ill-fated carpool expedition, which means there's very little backstory for most of them and, if I hadn't had the subtitles on, I don't think I'd have even learned one character's name before the halfway point. All of this makes it a little difficult to get attached to any of them. We also don't learn anything about the sniper, but that's far more acceptable - we don't need to know why he's up in his sniper nest with his antique rifle, taking shots at anyone who drives past, to be terrified by his very presence. On the other hand, when we do get background for some of the characters, it feels a little cliched, and not exactly helping to endear them to us, the audience - especially when the last time we started to get attached to someone they took a bullet right through the eye.
The ending does feel a little bit rushed, with the sudden appearance of more targets for the sniper and a few last-minute attempts to escape and/or fight back, but this pacing issue is something that often happens in one-room (or one-road) dramas when it's time to wrap things up. The ending might also seem a little mean-spirited to some, but it is also perfectly plausible under the circumstances, and you do have to give the characters credit for not falling into the old horror movie tropes when it comes down to it. Overall, Downrange certainly didn't disappoint me - whether you enjoy tense horror or splattery horror you'll find that the film ticks that box, and it's another solid film from Kitamura, who puts out a compelling film with a very limited premise.
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