The Apology

Grade: B

Seeing Avatar: The Way of Water last Friday was like having a breakfast of nothing but doughnuts. I’d have my one or two, and they were fine, but I’d still be hungry for real food. After Avatar, which I thought was a lot of empty beauty, I was looking for something satisfying to sink my teeth into. In my search for cinematic nourishment, I happened upon a nice little holiday thriller called The Apology. It’s a Shudder Original, recently dropped.

It’s essentially a cast of three. It could almost be a play, if it weren’t for the violence. Anna Gunn, best known as Walter White’s long-suffering wife from Breaking Bad, stars as Darlene. Her teenage daughter Sally went missing 20 years ago. She gave up drinking almost that long ago. For one reason or another, the father is out of the picture, and as Sally was her only child, Darlene has been an empty nester for some time. She is good friends with her across the street neighbor Gretchen (Janeane Garofalo). It’s Christmas Eve, and it’s thundering and snowing like crazy. All alone, she opens up a bottle of nice vodka, pours herself a glass like it’s water, and is about to take her first drink in 19 years when there is a knock on the front door.

It’s Jack (Linus Roache), her ex-brother-in-law. He used to be married to her sister. He was in the area, his car stalled in the storm, and he needs a place to hang for a while. After some friendly small talk, the bigger talk begins. He is sitting on a dark secret. The best moments of The Apology are when the characters just talk. The movie sinks to a lower level when the action takes over. I will never understand why people in films run upstairs or climb somewhere when they are in danger. They’re just trapping themselves up there.

I saw a slasher movie earlier this year where the twist was there was no killer. Every death that happened was either a freak accident, or somebody killing someone else out of paranoia, thinking they’re the killer. When watching some of those thankfully few scenes where Darlene is upstairs trying to escape her house, I wondered what the problem was. Nobody in the movie is really a violent person. The three actors work well together, and rise to the occasion. Gunn and Roache are our main two players; it’s fun to see them turn the tables on each other in this absorbing, easy-to-digest, 91 minute psychological thriller. I want to talk about Janeane Garofalo (who is a talented comedian and was such a unique unconventional beauty in the 90s), but it seems icky and inappropriate to get personal and speculate about appearance in a movie review. Maybe you know what I mean.

The Apology is an excellent TV movie, or straight-to-video one. Those terms are somewhat dated, so I’ll put it another way: The Apology is one of the best films out right now on a lesser-used streaming service.

Grade: B