TAD Film Fest Review: Refuge

By Less Lee Moore

If you’ve seen The Road or Season Four of The Walking Dead, you’ve seen more artfully realized versions of the film Refuge. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s the truth.

Andrew Robertson’s film peeks into the lives of some of the survivors of a bacterial plague that has wiped out much of humanity. Unfortunately, we find this out in a post-credits montage that is reminiscent of 28 Days Later or The Bay but not as clever. In fact, we’ve all seen so many zombie/post-apocalypse movies at this point it would have been more compelling to just show that kind of footage without explaining what actually happened. It would have given the movie a much-needed bit of creepy mystery.

Visually, Refuge also falls short. The shaky cam is distracting and the tendency to shift lighting, color palette, and even film grain within a scene is annoying. The sound design does a similar thing, interspersing noises like radio frequencies and dial tones into the score. This would be OK if it wasn’t for the drastic variations in sound levels throughout the film which makes it difficult to pick out dialogue but makes car engines and gunshots deafening.

It’s almost as if Refuge can’t decide whether it wants to be an experimental, avant garde film or a horror/survival drama film. This is a shame because there are some outstanding moments that promise something better.

The Georgia location is great, with some glorious color and visual texture found in the wooded or desolate areas through which many of these characters travel. Even though The Walking Dead is also shot in Georgia, Refuge manages to find some beautiful shots of its own, particularly an abandoned, overgrown Wal-Mart parking lot and a variety of foreclosed homes. The opening long shot of the film, when one of these homes is shown while five men with guns walk into frame is incredibly effective. Unfortunately, that storyline is undercooked and merely used to draw us into the film’s main narrative of a family trying to survive. If the two storylines had synthesized more effectively, Refuge would have been a better movie.

There’s a chilling scene where an unknown person knocks on the front door of the house where the family is hiding and another incredibly suspenseful one where the family is trying to hide in the dark woods while people walk through with flashlights. These moments are few and far between, though, and most of the time Refuge just drags.

Since this is Andrew Robertson’s first feature film, I’m willing to cut him a little slack. Let’s hope his next effort is a big improvement.

Refuge screened at Toronto After Dark on October 22.