Retreat is an impressive effort for first time director Carl Tibbetts. How a young guy with no IMDB presence managed to score Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins), Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot), and Thandie Newton (2012) to star in his tensely scripted, claustrophobic thriller about viral infection and societal collapse is anyone’s guess, but Tibbetts generally makes good use of his stellar cast and superb location and steers his directorial debut handily enough until the very end, where he smashes his film upon the rocks of an illogical, emotionally conflicted ending.
Retreat tells the familiar tale of a young couple on holiday trying to mend their broken marriage. In not particularly original fashion we learn that Kate (Newton) has recently miscarried and feels resentful toward her husband, Martin (Murphy). They have decided to return to a remote island to stay in Fairweather Cottage, where they had vacationed in earlier, happier times. Ample time is spent setting up their discordant marriage and lack of physical intimacy. Martin jogs along the coast, puffing his inhaler every so often, while Kate stays at home writing sappy bloggish memoirs about her disintegrating life. Not much sympathy is elicited in these scenes, which had me thinking more about how spoiled and ungrateful these two yuppy scumbags were than how much I wanted them to kiss and make up.
But into every life a little rain must fall, and for these two living under dark clouds of their own devisings, a real storm is about to be unleashed. Their generator fails, and calls to the cottage’s landlord on the mainland go unanswered. Just when they start to worry, a bloody man dressed in army fatigues passes out in their front yard. They take him in, and upon his waking their situation takes a turn for the worse. Jack (Jamie Bell) is his name, and he tells them that an airborne viral plague has been unleashed and that it is heading their way. He jumps into action, sealing windows and smashing furniture to create barricades, locking them all in together.
Retreat is at its best in the middle where the three-way relationship dynamics are investigated in their various permutations. Traditional town and country themes are explored as the lowlife Jack bosses the suburbanites around, causing Martin to seek alpha male approval and Kate to question her loyalty to her lame duck husband. In these moments you wonder about all the ways the film might play out. Is Jack’s story a hoax? Do Jack and Kate know each other? Maybe Martin is Jack’s gay lover and this is all an elaborate plan to murder Kate? While the ambiguity of their situation is kept intact for as long as possible, eventually the truth must come out, and because of how long the big twist takes to be fully explained, most of the drama is leeched out of it. For all the interesting ideas Retreat plays with, in the end it is the film itself that retreats into cliche, hastily revising character motivations, eradicating believability, and even to a certain degree likability of the film as a whole.
That said, the terrible ending is just one part of an otherwise pretty well made film. The rest of the picture has a lot to recommend it, from the outstanding performances, the blustery island location, the driving suspenseful score and the genuine tension and intrigue created right up until the final reel. Carl Tibbetts has proven he knows how to direct actors and write dialogue, but next time he may want to leave the plot to someone else.
Looks like little Billy Elliot is all grown up and terrorizing people. That’s the showbiz life for ya. You can now add Jamie Bell to the small cast of Carl Tibbets’ psychological thriller/horror movie “The Retreat”, though it’s unclear what role he’ll be playing. The film is one of those small-scale productions that have been around awhile, with a lot of flux in the cast. “The Retreat” revolves around a couple with marriage issues (Thandie Newton and Cillian Murphy) that heads out to a remote island to try to mend their relationship, only to have a third person, a soldier, join them with news that everyone else on the British mainland have been killed by an airborne virus. Of course this wouldn’t be much of a psychological thriller if we didn’t question whether the soldier was telling the truth or not. “Doctor Who’s” David Tennant was originally cast as the soldier, and it’s unclear if Bell has replaced him. Not much has been clear about “The Retreat”, actually. The cast could change again next month for all we know.
The last time we reported on Carl Tibbetts’s would-be directorial debut, the psychological thriller “Retreat”, Jason Isaacs was playing the male lead alongside Thandie Newton, as a married couple who head out to a cabin on an isolated island to escape from city life and mend their relationship. Instead of peace and tranquility, though, they find a soldier in a biohazard suit who tells them that an airborne virus has wiped out everyone else on the mainland.
Now according to Deadline, “Inception’s” Cillian Murphy has replaced Isaacs in the role of the husband. As far as we know, Newton is still playing the wife, and “Doctor Who’s” David Tennant is playing the soldier with the sad tale of woe. Of course, this will be Murphy’s second movie where he has to outrun a deadly virus, though considering that the film hinges on whether Tennant’s character is telling the truth or not, that is possibly a 50-50 chance it actually is a movie about a killer virus.
