NEW LIFE (2024) - Mark Reviews Movies

New Life, Brainstorm Media

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 2, 2024

New Life follows a woman on the run and the woman tasked with finding her, and for about half of the movie, that's all we know of the plot. What fills that obvious gap? It's the sense of mystery, for sure, since we have no idea why the fleeing woman is first seen walking the streets with her face covered in blood, has to evade armed men in her home, and starts taking a surreptitious route toward Canada.

Is that enough? It's not particularly here, especially when we realize that writer/director John Rosman, making his debut, is doing little more than playing a game with our sympathies and expectations by withholding information for as long as possible. Once the picture of what's really happening here becomes clear, it only highlights how gimmicky the structure is and how shallow the movie's goals are.

The target of the hunt is Jessica Murdock (Hayley Erin), a seemingly ordinary young woman who obviously has gone through something before her introduction. Blood does indeed cover most of her face, and as she maneuvers streets and alleys in some town, her eyes dart around, scanning for any sign that someone might spot or be following her. When she arrives at her home, she cleans herself, changes clothes, and finds an engagement ring hidden in a sock in a drawer. A happy photo of her and a man explain that detail, but before she has any time to rest and react to all of whatever has happened to her, Jessica is interrupted by sounds downstairs. It's some men with pistols, forcing her to go out the window and begin her journey north.

In terms of characterization, that's all there is to Jessica—a previous life, made up of broad details, that has been overturned for reasons that aren't known. It's almost a test for the audience. How easily do we connect with the protagonist of a story, simply because that character is framed as one?

For all we know, Jessica has committed some awful act, given her blood-soaked introduction, and maybe it has to do with the boyfriend, who's absent in the movie's present tense. Then again, she could the victim of something, but our instinct to identify with her remains either way, simply because the filmmaker presents her a figure worthy of sympathy and Erin's performance revolves around fear.

The same goes, albeit in the opposite direction, for Elsa Gray (Sonya Walger), the professional "fixer" working with a shadowy group to find Jessica. Her character is equally opaque at the start. All we know of her is that she has a pistol and has been tasked by some organization, which has significant technological advantage in the form of seemingly free access to cellphone tracking and security camera footage, to seek out the character who has been established as the protagonist. That inherently makes her the antagonist, of course, despite the fact that she elicits some early sympathy by way of signs that she has some debilitating medical condition.

If all of this sounds vague, that's not simply because the screenplay's secrets should probably be maintained. It's also because the story's secrets are the primary way it tries to keep our interest. Rosman doesn't tell us who these characters are, how they got into this situation, and why Jessica needs to run and Elsa needs to pursue, because to do so would be to ruin the potential surprise.

What that means here, though, is that this story isn't grounded in anything worth connecting to, apart from the very basics, which may or may not be what we anticipate. Rosman doesn't cheat, technically, because the plot and characters remain the same, even after learning what Jessica has or hasn't done, through a series of also-obscure flashbacks, and why Elsa is chasing her.

The only adjustment is in the stakes of the story, which are eventually revealed to be much bigger than either Jessica or Elsa, the latter's boss Raymond (Tony Amendola), and the various strangers, who help the young woman and face the consequences (Elsa mentions having to clean up loose ends, although maybe she doesn't mean it in the way we initially suspect), the former meets along the way. By the time the truth is revealed, the story presents a string of moral and ethical questions about how the characters act. There are practical ones, too, such as how Jessica doesn't figure out what's happening and why the clandestine group seems to be so incompetent, but in both cases, the filmmaker doesn't bother to explore or justify the trickier or more questionable elements of the story.

That's because it's mainly about the chase, as well as the puzzle. New Life almost seems to be the result of a challenge Rosman has established for himself, seeing how far he can take the plotting of a thriller with only the fundamental elements and what kind of a connection he can create for characters by toying with the audience's expectations. It's an intriguing experiment of sorts, but in practice, it doesn't make for an engaging piece of storytelling.

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