FILM GUTTER REVIEWS: NOBODY LEAVES (AKA BRAID)

6/5/2021

NOBODY LEAVES (aka BRAID), 2018
Dir. Mitzi Pierone, 82 mins

I've never quite understood how these double titles things happen – I mean maybe in the days of VHS there was value in trying to ape the title of a more successful movie, not to mention the many unofficial sequels that we tended to see back in the 70s and 80s. But why this should happen in 2018 I've never really grasped – maybe it's different names for different markets? Anyway, I watched this via Sky Cinema as Nobody Leaves, though when I look that title up on IMDB it sends me right to Braid. So there you go – one movie, two identities. And this was one of those movies that I went into knowing literally nothing about – just sounded like something that would fit the bill for us here at Film Gutter. And in the end... well... it was and wasn't.

Let's start with the story – Petula and Tilda are two twenty-somethings forced to abandon a large drug shipment in their apartment when the police come knocking. While they do escape arrest, they have what might be a larger problem – being $83,000 dollars in debt to a dealer by the name of Coco. They try and come up with some way to get the money, but only come up with one – to visit the home of their wealthy but disturbed childhood friend Daphne, who has been effectively playing a childhood game the three partook in ever since her younger days. As the pair arrive, they determine that they have to play along for enough time to find Daphne's safe before getting away with that stack of cash to pay Coco back – but the strange game itself is a threat to all three of them.

Now, on the surface that might sound relatively simple, and I am probably underplaying the complexity of this movie for two reasons – firstly I'm a little reticent to spoil everything that goes on here, and secondly because I don't really understand much else of what is going on here. The film certainly goes for a unique style – lots of smash cuts, strange colour palettes and trippy effects to accompany the various drug freak-outs of the characters – and almost all the dialogue and interaction does have a strange, stylised feel to it that doesn't quite seem to fit the real world.

The issue for me is that it just feels like nothing hangs together – I came to the end of this one totally baffled, and in all honesty by about halfway I was pretty much disinvested in what was going on. It doesn't feel coherent, and sadly seems as though the focus is more on cool and weird visuals than it is on stringing a plot together you can penetrate and characters you can bring yourself to care about. Nothing feels like it really matters before too long, and too much is just left dangling unexplained that could desperately have done with a revisit before the credits rolled.

RATING: 2.5/10. Don't get me wrong – I'm not averse to experimentation. In fact regular readers will know exactly how highly I respect movies trying something new, but it should be done for some kind of a reason. Nobody Leaves feels like it's trying to be different for the sake of being different, and that sadly is an idea that very rarely lands. It's ultimately just rather a mess, which again is not automatically a criticism – last week's movie Meat Grinder was kind of a mess, but it was bleak and compelling and still had some sort of logic to it. There was a reason it was like that. A movie can be a wild, exciting mess, or an entertaining mess, but sadly this one is neither. Everyone involved is no doubt trying hard, but if you can make head or tail of this one then you're doing a lot better than me. There was promise here in this concept, but less style and more substance was needed here – a simpler story and less flashy touches and this could have scored much higher, but with all its fundamental flaws I can only grade this one a 2.5/10.

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