 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Ditched • Year: 2021 • Country: Canada • Director: Christopher Donaldson • Main cast: Marika Sila, Mackenzie Gray, Kris Loranger, Lee Lopez, Declan O’Reilly • Runtime: 86 minutes • Production company: Shadowbrook Pictures • TRAILER
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One location: The middle of nowhere in the woods. One scenario: An ambulance and a cop car both crashed. And a small set of characters: Three paramedics, two cops, and two prisoners. And this is how the movie Ditched (2021) begins.
At first, we the audience are as confused as the characters. What made them crash? But soon the priority of taking care of the injured while guardianing the convicted prisoners change when a group of mysterious beings appears in the scene. Ladies and gentlemen, the mystery is served.
There are two things that remain constant in Ditched (2021), from the very start of the movie until the film is over; those are the constant aura of darkness and mystery surrounding the whole picture and the fact that the group of characters on the screen always remains limited. Yes, of course, some characters come and go, some die and others appear new in the scene, but the simplicity in the visual and narrative contexts is standing. Which, as always, could be a good thing and a bad thing.
Writer and director Christopher Donaldson chooses to feel wrapped up with those elements of simplicity and control in his debut feature film. A steady scenario almost like a theater play, but with the elements that cinema provides to create its magic. And under his orders, there are a group of actors that carry on with their duties in an efficient way, without outstanding but neither flaws.
The problem with Ditched (2021) is that despite its limitations and deficits it is built in a very pretentious way. The filmmakers could have chosen a more modest way to present the story but instead aimed for a style of grandiloquent filmmaking that they couldn’t cope with. Because the story doesn’t meet the expectations, and also because the technical craft can’t keep up with what they attempt to achieve. And when you try to achieve an epic but fail halfway one can see the true color.
In the terms of the story, which is what I take more into consideration as a cinema geek, Ditched (2021) starts playing the game of confusion and mystery, which is the same sport where the characters are. That is an exciting way to start the narration, although the film wears down the interest soon. It is not until the final acts of the movie that the plot gets excited again and luckily we can wash off the feelings of wasting time we had during the first minutes of the running time. So, yes, the movie has a couple of aces in the pocket that manage to salvage the day, but it will never cope with the pretensions shown with the attitude of the film.
In the end, the story in Ditched (2021) might not be so bad because you can still keep in your head some of the happenings and think them over. But perhaps the filmmakers made a mistake focusing too much on the efectivism than a solid narrative.
RATE: 5/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt10166508
