[FILM REVIEW] THE COVE/ESCAPE TO THE COVE (2021)WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ROBERT ENRIQUEZ

1/9/2021

this is a low-budget film and it wears its origins on its sleeves. However, I think it has wrung every dollar out of that budget and it is a good-looking, well-shot indie.

The Cove/Escape to the Cove (2021)
Written and directed by Robert Enriquez

Review by: Mark Walker

In the near future, a pandemic has ravaged the earth. Fear, greed, and destruction have made way for such terrors as famine, pirates, and zombies. CAIRO YAZID's, only chance for survival is to join forces with a curmudgeon, SOLOMON, also still untouched by the fatal virus, as he is the only one who knows the secret location of the safe place known simply as THE COVE. (IMDB)

Warning – there may be a couple of minor spoilers for the Cove in this review

The Cove or, Escape to the Cove (depending on whether you are in the UK or the US) is the latest from director Robert Enriquez and opens with a 28 Days Later-esque montage of Cairo Yazid (Garrett Barghash) as he makes his way through empty streets and past abandoned shops and cars. So far, so post apocalypse. It is an effective opening that sets the scene and introduces the near future world, destroyed by a terrifying pandemic (very topical!).

A chance encounter with another lone traveller also introduces us to the “Wanderers” – this movie’s ‘Zombies’ – victims of the virus, who shamble around looking fairly unthreatening until they try to take a bite out of you. Olivia (Dana Kippel) tells Cairo about The Cove, an oasis of safety and peace and they agree to travel together to find it. As they reach the coast, they stumble across the mildly insane Luther (Mike Markoff) and his pirates (no eyepatches) who are also trying to find a way to The Cove. Unfortunately for Luther, the whereabouts of The Cove only seem to be known to Captain Benjamin Solomon (Enriquez) and he is not talking. Luther’s band of reprobates largely appeat to want to find The Cove so they can do unspeakable things to Solomon’s daughter who is one of its residents.

When a tragedy forces Solomon and Cairo together, Cairo begs Solomon to take him to The Cove, but the ex-soldier is not keen to go, partly because of his strained relationship with his daughter and partly because he sees his life being lived in the Marina he has come to call his home. What follows next is a fight for survival between Cairo and Solomon and Luther’s pirates as they decide, with brute force and violence, who gets to go to The Cove.

So, let’s identify the elephant in the room from the get-go.

This is a low budget, independent movie and, as such, you are not going to get the same production values as you would with your typical Hollywood blockbuster. I say this only because I think a lot of people base their views and opinions on unfair comparisons between low-budget filmmaking like The Cove and the latest Marvel movie. Both types of film have their place in the world of entertainment and the intrinsic value of either cannot be judged against the other.

Hopefully, this won’t be my last review for GNoH, but I felt I had to get this out in the open at the start.

Don’t worry, I won’t repeat myself every time I write a review.

So, remember, this is low-budget filmmaking.

Having said that the screener I was sent streamed in 4k and looked nice in the home cinema, piped through my projector. Brighter scenes were nice and crisp and, although there was a bit of noise in darker scenes, it did not detract from the image.

The soundtrack was stereo, but the amp did a nice job of creating faux-surround and gave a pretty decent soundstage. In fact I really enjoyed the soundtrack from Ralf Lichtenberg which added a suitably downbeat and brooding atmosphere to the film.

While the idea of a secret oasis in post-apocalyptic/disaster/zombie films is a well-worn trope, I do love a good Zombie movie so was looking forward to watching this one.

Cards on table time. From a Zombie perspective, I was a little disappointed. While we had a little bit of Zombie action at the start of the film and both of the posters lean heavily on the Zombie influence, there was a surprising lack of Zombies throughout the rest of the film. While the movie turns out to be more of a drama about the relationships and tensions caused by the break-down of society, the lack of zombies was a bit frustrating. The film introduced the concept of ‘Sea Lions’ for example - Zombies lurking the water, swimming around like Sirens, with glowing blue eyes, just waiting for someone to put a foot wrong and fall in the water. While they are used in a couple of ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ scenes, I really wanted more of this fantastic idea; I would watch a whole film about these watery devils!

The credits end with a disclaimer and joke, ‘No Zombies were hurt in the making of this film’ – no kidding, there were hardly any in it!

The film also felt a bit confused as to who the lead was. Was it Cairo or was it Solomon? It focussed a lot on Cairo, who wasn’t really fleshed out much as a character, and I can’t help thinking that it would have been more interesting if it had been his short-lived friend, Olivia, who had teamed up with Solomon. We learn very little about Cairo throughout the film, other than that his parents are dead – and we learn that in a prologue at the start of the film. Solomon had a better, more interesting backstory with his estrangement from his daughter, a result of him killing his own wife when she became infected. Solomon’s history with the military was also only hinted at, but was key to his relationship with Luther, and I couldn’t help feeling that I would have liked to have learned more about that.

It felt as if the film’s running time of 1 hr 37 mins could have been used a little more effectively to fill some of these gaps. With the lack of Zombie action, it would have made for a more compelling character study of Solomon to delve a bit more into his background. Perhaps a few more background scenes could have taken the place of the early establishing shots of Cairo and then Cairo and Ollie walking through abandoned city-scapes as these felt a little drawn out. They do an excellent job of world-building at the start of the film, but a few of them could have been lost, without any detriment to the set-up.

The acting is up and down, but everyone does a decent job, and the odd dodgy line of dialogue does not really cause a problem for the film as a whole. Enriquez does a great job as Solomon and Phillip Cook is very effective as his friend Lt. Colonel Samuel Cook. Mike Markoff is clearly having a whale of a time as Luther, and they are lucky none of the boats in the marina sink after the amount of scenery chewing involved. Joking aside, though, it is effective, and he comes across as insane and unpredictable (and generally a bit of a shit). In some ways, his character was underused and could have been more of a threat to Solomon and Co, but he was still fun to watch.

As I said at the beginning, this is a low-budget film and it wears its origins on its sleeves. However, I think it has wrung every dollar out of that budget and it is a good-looking, well-shot indie. While I enjoyed the story and the outcome, I did feel its focus was slightly ‘off’ and could have been more interesting if it had explored Solomon further and made more of its Wanderers. However, I did not find myself looking at my watch to see if it was close to finishing (as I did the day after, watching a much bigger budget horror from a more established director) and any film that includes a cameo from Eric Roberts, has to be worth a watch!

The film doesn’t really deliver anything particularly unexpected, and the ending came up a bit sudden when I would have liked to have seen a slightly more epic battle between Solomon and Luther. But The Cove mostly delivers what you want and what you expect (minus the Zombies) and, sometimes, that is all you need!

If you put a gun to my head and asked me to score the film (which is always a bit arbitrary) I would go for a 5/10, which is still a good film in my eyes. If you think the write up on IMDB sounds good, then give it a whirl but I would not come looking for a Zombie flick, because that isn’t what you will get. What you do get is a fairly decent tale of survival that will keep you entertained for an hour and forty minutes. I think the scores on IMDB are a little unfair - this is by no stretch of the imagination a ‘masterpiece,’ but it is a testament to what you can achieve with a low-budget and determination.

mark walker

Mark is an NHS worker living in Gloucestershire with his family and a plethora of pets, including rats, guinea pigs, a rabbit, beetles, tarantulas, chickens and degus. When he is not working or feeding the animals (not to each other) he writes screenplays and short stories as well as working on his first novels that, one day, might see the light of day. Funnily enough, the subject matter of the majority of this writing is Horror. While he has dabbled in drama and family films, he is always drawn back to ghouls and ghosties and all things grotty. He currently has a number of short stories published across three compilations.

He has had a fascination with the dark side ever since begging and begging to be allowed to stay up late and watch things like The Horror Express or Salem's Lot, before crapping himself to sleep (which is a euphemism, he hastens to add). Introduced to the works of Dennis Wheatley by his mum, it was only a matter of time before he was getting Stephen King for Chistmas (books, not the actual man) with notes from his grandparents asking if his mother knew he was reading this stuff. This also led to his mum questioning his friends as to the state of his mind as his interest in horror grew... which was strange, seeing as it was her fault for telling him to read Wheatley and letting him stay up to watch Salem's Lot in the first place!

Anyway, fast forward to now and he still loves watching and reading horror, as well as trying to write it. Favourite books and films? Well, that will be a long list. Mark has always loved Stephen King but is hoping working with GNoH will help broaden his horizons to new writers, which can only be a good thing. Film-wise, it is hard to pin down as he enjoys a wide variety of films from both the past and the present. From Alien, The Thing and The Shining to Ringu, Midsommar and Fear Street, if it has monsters and things that go bump in the night, he is happy.

He can currently be found trying to corrupt his daughters by sharing many of his favourite films and rising to their challenge when they say the last one wasn't all that scary....