by Lisa Nystrom
Worth: $14.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Cam Killion, Joohun Lee
Intro:
… an offbeat buddy film …
Writer/Director Laramie Dennis broke into the business developing Off-Off-Broadway plays, with an approach to free-flowing dialogue and banter that still heavily influences her writing as she makes the transition from stage to screen. In her feature film debut, Where in the Hell, Dennis offers up an offbeat buddy film, taking two strangers on a road trip to the Canadian border in search of a lost dog, a runaway girlfriend, and a possible audition that may or may not be waiting for them at their destination.
Kasey (Cam Killion), a prop-master from LA is abandoned by her girlfriend without so much as a note, leaving Kasey without a ride, or reception thanks to the one-horse town in the middle of nowhere, or her beloved dog, Elmo. What Kasey does have is Alan (Joohun Lee), a vaguely familiar actor she worked with once, who’s passing through on his way to a job in Canada. Set right before the true impact of the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, the duo takes off across the dusty backroads, finding possible career opportunities, probable psychics and, of course, friendship along the way.
Set in rural America in the unnamed liminal space between LA and Montana, Dennis has done a masterful job at creating a true sense of purgatory for her characters. Neither employed nor unemployed thanks to the constant uncertainty that was the reality of living through the pandemic, facing lockdowns and border closures, the two approach their unknown futures with masks slung half over an ear or hooked beneath their chins, unsure of what it all means but knowing that something is in the process of changing so irrevocably that there’s no going back after this.
Killion and Lee have a laidback chemistry reminiscent of siblings forced to spend extended periods in the car together, both wishing they could be elsewhere but, at the same time, giving off an air that it’s them against the world. Both characters make mention of this being their Hero’s Journey, but it’s less about sacrifice and growth for either of them than it is about embracing their realities and learning to come to terms with the fact that at some point you have to stop forcing the narrative by acting out the roles you create for yourself, and instead, just start living truthfully.
