Retreat, 2025.
Directed by Ted Evans.
Starring Anne Zander, Sophie Stone, James Joseph Boyle, Ace Mahbaz, Tianah Hodding, Anna Seymore, Brian Duffy, and Naomi Postawa-Husar.
SYNOPSIS:
In an isolated deaf community, Matt’s idyllic world cracks when Eva arrives, making him question his identity and the costs of maintaining his supposedly utopian society.
Ted Evans’ Retreat opens in unsettling fashion, with a series of black-and-white photographs of school children that evolve in the severity of what they depict. It’s subtle, but it evokes memories of real-world atrocities, and the imagery is accompanied by ominous, uncomfortable sounds. It’s a mood that never really lets up.
Skip forward to the present and we’re at a school, commune, whatever you want to call it, where Deaf people find refuge from a world that labels them as other. Running things is Mia (Sophie Stone), who presents herself with a warmth that may hide something behind-the-smile. Her early exchanges hint at a cult-like anger towards the outside world, and hung behind her is a painting that L. Ron Hubbard might think twice about putting up.
She is front-and-centre of proceedings because of the imminent arrival of Eva (Anne Zander), a new resident from Germany who brings with her a secretive past and a pair of fresh eyes with which the audience can take in this new world. Insular, quiet, and prone to playing with the multitude of bracelets on both wrists, Eva is asked to “trust us” and forget the outside’s “limiting beliefs”, so despite a terrifying incident involving a strange alarm, and the behind-close-doors ‘rehabilitation’ she goes through, the stranger-in-a-strange land settles in rather quickly.
For so much of the film you’re led to believe that it’s Eva’s journey you’ll be taken on, but the script pulls a bit of a switcheroo half way through, asking you to make the kind of leap of faith that the school asks of Eva. Whether you do or not could undermine your enjoyment of Retreat, because a character who has had your allegiance since she nervously pulled up in the driveway at the start of the movie, suddenly begins to make decisions that don’t feel in keeping with what has come before.
The focus instead switches to James Joseph Boyle’s Matt, who has lived at the school for as long as he can remember, and has formed quite a connection with Eva. Watching her integrate into the life he knows triggers something inside him, a desire for answers that sets in motion a rather bleak set of events for the rest of the movie.
Whether the twists and turns of the ludicrous final act work for you, Evans does an outstanding job of creating a burgeoning sense of doom that hangs over the entire narrative. From the aforementioned alarm sequence, which sees the residents of the school ushered into the basement like a scene from the Blitz, with strange lights flashing and no questions asked, through to a nerve-shredding stand-off in a clearing in the woods that involves two wayward residents and a loaded gun, Retreat is a movie that you try and second guess, but it’s always one step ahead of you, or for better-or worse, going in a different direction.
The use of sound, or lack thereof because of the BSL focused story, is integral in making certain aspects of the movie work. Scenes in which the audio is dulled or muted to heighten what the character is going through are very effective, but then on the other end of the scale the sound-design emphasises how the community experience noise in a positive way. From the thrumming of the music, to applauding with their feet.
The cast are uniformly great; Sophie Stone gives a performance that always feels as though it’s teetering on the cusp of something darker, and is all the more effective because whatever that is remains suppressed; Boyle is brilliant as the veil slips from his eyes, immediately earning your empathy with a turn of longing and sadness; while Zander is a victim of the plot mechanics of the second half, she portrays perfectly the tender, doe-eyed would-be protagonist.
Retreat is an ambitious and unique take on the familiar cult fable. Part thriller, part damaged person’s journey-of-discovery, which remains thoroughly engrossing throughout, even as it begins to unravel towards a messy end.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film ★ ★ ★ / Movie ★ ★ ★
Matt Rodgers – Follow me on Twitter
