TIFF Report: THE PASSAGE Review

Posted by Kurt Halfyard at 11:30am.

Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Thriller, Horror, USA & Canada, Toronto Film Festival 2007.

Another entry into the ‘tourist know thy place’ subgenre of horror, recently adopted in gory efforts such as the Hostel (plus the sequel) and Zibahkhana (Hell’s Ground), but having deeper roots in more drama-heavy films like Deliverance or The Sheltering Sky. The common thread being that cushy (even arrogant) well-off haves are playing with fire when they get too ambitious while exploring and encounter (often have-not) locals. The Passage goes for the classy and more traditional approach by showing Morocco as equal measure labyrinthine market place and austere emptiness, both of which are easy traps for the unwary or overly curious. It is unfortunate that the plot is telegraphed to the point of transparency. Incidents are so obviously laid out and connected that anyone, even half asleep (which in this case is actual fact, 9 days into a 40+ film week) can see where this is going both in a narrative sense and also the films message. Some movies wear their heart on their sleeve, this one wears its brain there. This is a shame as it spoils some effective tension building from first time Brit director Mark Heller. Even moreso, it wastes a star making performance from Israeli born actress Sarai Givaty who plays Zahara with as a women who is modern, confident, stunningly gorgeous and laced with a heady mix of altruistic naïveté and dangerous menace. Exactly the qualities that tend to attract folks to slices of benign exoticism such as this.

Luke and Chris have been traveling around Morocco for some time, Chris attempt to help Luke forget the recent death of his girlfriend, presumably by getting him laid by the local women (something Chris wants for himself as just as much). Luke, played here by a surprisingly sensitive Stephen Dorff, just wants to take pictures and soak up the sights. Even in the relative safety of the hotel and public market. Luke gets cut on the arm by someone with a small knife while browsing and photographing a goods laden stalls and Chris has blood drawn from a prostitutes fingernails during sex. While watching a story teller in the market-square Luke meets local nurse Zahara. Too helpful (and too-gorgeous - think Aishwarya Rai), Zahara not only offers to translate the story for him and buy him tea, but also tells him about a beautiful area in the remote mountains that she is more than willing to accompany him to. When Chris gets a look at her, with sex for his friend on the brain, he is all too happy to send his friend off alone. At this point the film could go a number of ways. With the careful set up and establishing of locale, Neil Jackson’s script could have gone down the road traveled by Danny Boyle’s The Beach as easily as the horror-thriller it eventually decides on being.

Style is not the problem here. Early traversing down the maze-like corridors of squat building with vague threats around each corner in town are echoed in both the ambiguity of Zahara’s intentions, but moreso in a brilliantly executed lengthy sequence set in an dark tunnel of unknown origin. Clearly the show-case of the film, and probable calling card for the director (The Passage is best viewed as a resume film), Illumination is provided with the flash from Lukes digital camera as he consults the screen to see what is captured in the darkness. As if he hopes for the primal fear of the unknown - an old darkened tunnel - can be penetrated by the rich toys of the first world. If this isn’t a great and telling metaphor for how both Iraq wars were fought, I don’t know what is. Over the course of this sequence, silence, darkness and sudden bursts of light create more tension than buckets of blood or gigabytes of CGI.

Commentary on places of poverty being punctuated with bits of high-technology (satellite TV dishes on one-room hovels) and the first worlds prostitution of the third culminates to a message better delivered elsewhere (If The Passage came out 15 years ago it likely would have made more of an impact). After further bludgeoning the audiences intelligence by giving several minutes of a Usual Suspect style flashbacks montage to ‘explain’ everything (most will have pieced out together by themselves at this point), it is unclear whether or not Heller is aiming for earnestness or satire with the final shot. Genre films have always been a great place to inject a little bit of social commentary, but finding the right way to mix them together seems to have eluded the makers of The Passage.