I’m legitimately surprised with the release, and success, of MAD MAX: FURY ROAD that cinemas weren’t immediately flooded with more post apocalyptic road movies. I don’t think it would necessarily be a bad thing as the genre usually presents some fun imagery, but I’m sure we’d be treated to quite a few stinkers as well. Nevertheless, we are not in that situation, so when something like DRIFTER comes along, I’m pretty interested. Sadly, this one doesn’t bring much to the wasteland table.
Drifter is the story of two brothers who are, in fact, drifters in a post apocalyptic wasteland. Since they have a functioning automobile, it makes them targets for all types of savages in their travels. When the brothers cross the wrong would-be attacker, they find themselves trapped in a town run by crazed cannibals.
Drifter attempts to set itself apart from the pack with it’s crazy kinetic first few minutes where a supposed robbery goes wrong. Blood immediately starts flying as our hero, Miles, played by co-writer Aria Emory, gets hole in the hand before a sleazy businessman gets a hole in the head. Once the film hits the road, we get start to get into Mad Max territory. Due to its limited locations and desert setting, Drifter feels a lot like the original Mad Max film. Unfortunately, the rest of the film never delivers on the promise of the opening scene.
As the brothers set out on the road we learn more about Miles’s relationship with his brother Dominic. None of this is particularly interesting, and it feels like we’re stalling to get to the town. Once the brothers are attacked in the creepy desert town, the action and the camerawork picks up again. The brothers are attacked by someone trying to damage their car, which the attacker succeeds at, leaving them stuck dead center in the middle of this town. This leads them to meeting Vijah who offers to help with Miles’s hand injury.
While his brother is being helped by the kind, but still deviously mysterious, Vijah, Dominic goes off on his own to get away from Vijah’s paranoia. That’s when things really start getting crazy. After a tryst with a local, Dominic is forced to face off against the savages that run this town.
At this point in the film, I was interested again because the villains are quite frightening. I particularly liked the performance of Anthony Ficco as Kane, one of the the evil town mayor’s trusty henchmen. This dude is nuts. He’s cracked up to a thousand the whole movie making him extremely watchable.
The movie then pretty much becomes a torture movie. Despite some good performances, the movie really lost me at this point. I know a lot of genre fans still dig the torture stuff, but I can’t stand it. After HOSTEL, everything felt stale and born more out of a place of anger than creativity. Now, Drifter doesn’t go too overboard with the torture scenes. Think more the Negan scene in the season opener of WALKING DEAD this year. In fact, there’s a scene with the mayor of the cannibal town that’s remarkably similar.
The movie concludes with a TEXAS CHAINSAW style dinner scene as you would expect from a cannibal film. The scene is pretty flat and doesn’t really go anywhere. By the time the credits rolled, I had pretty much felt unphased by the preceding eighty minutes.
Overall, it may sound like I really didn’t like this movie, but that’s not the case. I was constantly rooting for this movie. I wanted the whole movie to be more like it’s energetic opening scene. It may not have delivered, but some of the moments of action in the middle of the movie before the torture stuff were really cool. I loved the cinematography. I thought the wasteland looked great. The movie was filled with really good performances, and the score kicked ass. It just wasn’t as satisfying of an experience as I had hoped it to be.
2.5/5
Check out the trailer here:
XLrator Media is bringing DRIFTER to theaters this Friday, February 24th and to VOD and iTunes February 28th.
