REVIEW: You’ll Never Find Me [2024]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 100 minutes
Release Date: March 7th, 2024 (Australia) / March 22nd, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Umbrella Entertainment / Shudder
Director(s): Josiah Allen & Indianna Bell
Writer(s): Indianna Bell

You have a familiar face.

Patrick (Brendan Rock) doesn’t look too hot. Is he wallowing in guilt? Regret? Is he contemplating suicide? Simply trying to sleep? He’s definitely not expecting company. You don’t just yell, “F— off” to the closed door in the middle of a downpour if you’re seeking a friend. So, he opens it at the sound of a woman’s voice. It’s not the neighborhood kids. It’s not some drunk picking a fight. It’s someone in need of help. Not that he has any intention of letting his guard down just in case.

Directors Josiah Allen and Indianna Bell (who also writes) are very deliberately setting Patrick up to be our protagonist. He’s cautious. Paternal. Skeptical. Here’s this woman (Jordan Cowan) drenched from the storm and barefoot who’s somehow standing inside his mobile home despite the property locking its gates two hours previously. Did she run from the beach? Does she just want a ride home? Can anything she says be believed when it all seems so far-fetched—enough so that even she seems confused by some of what she says?

Yet You’ll Never Find Me can’t help giving her the benefit of the doubt. It can’t help but acknowledge her place in this story as a woman seemingly trapped by a strange man whose nice demeanor can easily be proven an act. So, why shouldn’t we also consider her the protagonist? Why shouldn’t we feel the tension when she wonders if he might harm her just as we wondered if she might hurt him at the start? They are both obviously hiding from something. Both are obviously not telling the whole truth. Where might it all lead?

Sadly, I’m still not quite sure even though I literally just watched its conclusion. Not because it’s confusing. Not even because it’s necessarily unbelievable or bad. No, I’m unsure about what Allen and Bell have done because they’ve sought to tie-up the loose ends of both characters without fully realizing the impossibility of the task. Why? Because the scenario isn’t quite “real.” What we’re seeing is in some respects a manifestation of one of their psychologies fracturing to the point of no return. So, even if the first instance of closure satisfies, it’s not the last. And the more ends we receive, the less impactful the whole becomes.

I don’t think the filmmakers shoot themselves in the foot so far as to render everything moot, but I wouldn’t blame others for thinking they might. Because while the production value is high with some great sound design and excellent tension, the release comes via revelations and actions that are too loud and convenient to work in the context of that mood. That those instances are then also shown to be that way for a reason—to subvert the subversion and dig deeper for a more rewarding second end—attempts to clean up the mess cause more mess.

We do finally get the conclusion this tale deserves, but only after pretending what we’ve watched wasn’t quite what we watched despite it ultimately proving that, no, it was exactly what we watched. There’s a way to do that that feels smart both via the script and the audience figuring it out, but You’ll Never Find Me instead chooses a path of distraction and overload that hopes we’re so caught up in the game of it all that we won’t realize how the dynamics are transparently being manipulated. It so desperately wants to be everything all at once that it finds itself flirting with becoming nothing at all.