Film Review: NIGHT BREAKERS: A Tantalizing Trek in the Dark Ends in Confusion [SXSW 2022]

Night Breakers Review

Night Breakers (2022) Film Review from the 29th Annual South by Southwest Film Festival, a movie written and directed by Gabriel Campoy and Guillem Lafoz, starring Pol Fernandez, Ana Gonzalvo, Chacha Huang, Marc Padró, Sergi Subirà and Andrew Tarbet.

This film opens conveying a sense of urgency; it piques one’s interest right away. A group of subterranean travelers walk single-file through a wide tunnel. They move at an uneven but hurried pace, encumbered by what looks like strings of lights strapped over jerry-rigged survival gear.

The creatures that snatch laggards from behind clearly fosters no solidarity or concerted survival effort among them. It’s every person for themselves, and care about nothing else but saving their own battery juice — or killing for someone else’s — to keep the lights going. Trial by ordeal is the coin of this monster-ridden, underground realm.

The xenophobia within the group adds to the tension. Some take issue with a young Asian girl who uses valuable time and battery life to pray for those taken by the light of fireplace matches. This conflict ups the stakes, which are high enough already. One weakness (probably not a crucial one) is the final square off. The fighting, though dynamic enough, is a bit dodgy, and it’s hard to reconcile how characters managed to survive the fray.

Fear of the unknown in general has been the time-honored go-to method of story-telling when it comes to enthralling an audience. Campoy and Lafoz, who had collaborated on their last film, Helena, employ these elements to the max over Night Breakers’ 17-minute screen time: the dark, what’s in the dark, claustrophobia, isolation, suspicion — all effectively exploit the indelible stamp on our collective primal psyche.

There is a reason the horror trope never gets trite. Fear is a constant testament to who we are as a species; it’s a great teacher. It drives us to test our limits and helps us to manage risk, yet keeps us from getting reckless. As with love, fear can bond us or split us apart, or both at once. These elements are evident in Night Breakers — just fine as far as it goes in a short film, with plenty left over for a feature.

Rating: 8/10

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