Continue, 2024.
Written and Directed by Nadine Crocker.
Starring Nadine Crocker, Shiloh Fernandez, Lio Tipton, Kat Foster, Emily Deschanel, Dale Dickey, Anthony Caravella, Annapurna Sriram, and Jay Seals.
SYNOPSIS:
A depressed girl attempts suicide, gets admitted to a mental institution involuntarily. She finds friends, love, and a new outlook on life, but learns some choices are irreversible.
Writing, directing, and starring in one’s film about suicide, depression, and addiction is a clear indicator that Continue is an intensely personal project from Nadine Crocker. Fittingly, she does not sanitize anything about the opening sequence involving a suicide attempt, leaving her character covered in blood. It’s a raw, disturbing sequence that sets the stage for a narrative that is about recovery and how self-harm affects everyone around that person.
Pulling from personal experience, Nadine Crocker is Dean, a woman healing in a rehabilitation center, depressive and suicidal for a variety of reasons connected to her parents. In that stretch, there are uncomfortably yet likely accurate scenes of force-feeding and more, alongside a pleasant supporting role appearance from Dale Dickey as an empathetic nurse. Dean also confronts her past in therapy with Emily Deschanel’s Janet, making for some loaded dialogue exchanges.
However, this isn’t a film that necessarily keeps viewers on edge about whether or not Dean will self-destruct again, although there are moments that push her in that direction. For the most part, the treatment is helpful, and she grounds herself by befriending some troubled rehab friends, bonding and supporting one another. Once she is allowed back into society, though, in comes Shiloh Fernandez’s Trenton like a locomotive, knocking out a patron making unwanted sexual comments toward her on her new bartending job. It feels like something out of a fantasy, but what’s captivating about this story is that even when the characters reveal startling trauma to each other, there is something real connecting them.
That’s what is surprising, in general, about Continue; it starts with a disturbing type of bang that might lead one to believe it will keep going down that route until it is an overwrought disaster, but it does the opposite by reeling itself in and taking a restrained approach to recovery and studying these characters. That’s not to say there are no mistakes here, as there are several questionable third-act choices, with the primary one being a significant reveal that, while it does drive home a strong point, feels like it would have felt better handled if the film were explicitly open about it from the beginning, or used it as a recurring plot device rather than what ultimately amounts to a poorly placed twist that doesn’t really belong in a film this serious.
That aspect is what it is, and forgivable, considering there is no denying that this film is tackling an important topic with guts and honesty while peeling back the layers of its recovering characters. Nadine Crocker and Shiloh Hernandez fully embody the happiness and pain of these characters, at one point playing something called “the honesty game,” cutting through all the things about their lives they might be ashamed of. By the end, even Trenton is a fully formed character rather than merely a love interest and another person who can keep Dean grounded.
Nadine Crocker’s Continue has apparently sat on the shelf since 2022 after premiering at the Cinequest Film Festival, which is shocking because it is a daringly authentic work that deserves as much awareness as possible for its potential ability to touch and even save lives.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
