Limitations can be a fuel for creativity when encountered by passionate artists—and this is especially true in the world of film. And when it comes to filmmaking, what bigger flex is there than limiting yourself to a single take and refusing to engage with the shortcuts offered by editing? Understandably enough, this kind of advanced […]
Limitations can be a fuel for creativity when encountered by passionate artists—and this is especially true in the world of film. And when it comes to filmmaking, what bigger flex is there than limiting yourself to a single take and refusing to engage with the shortcuts offered by editing? Understandably enough, this kind of advanced craftsmanship is rare in the indie sphere due to the sheer difficulty of achieving seamless oners without Hollywood levels of time and resources, but it’s not impossible.
That’s why Australian filmmaker Luke Sparke (best known for this year’s Primitive War) decided that he wasn’t about to let something as silly as a “budget” get in the way of creating a respectable single-take thriller, with the result of his ambitious filmmaking experiment being the apocalyptic creature feature Scurry.
Written by frequent Sparke collaborator Tom Evans, Scurry is similar to the director’s previous projects in that it’s meant to look and feel much more expensive and blockbustery than it actually is. And while the film’s marketing is riding on the moderate success of Primitive War,Scurry was actually completed before that movie, with its wide release having been held back until Sparke was a more bankable name.
In the completed film, we follow Jamie Costa as Mark, an ordinary man who finds himself trapped in a series of tunnels underneath a metropolitan city undergoing a giant monster attack.Making his way through the dark, Mark stumbles upon fellow survivor Kate (Emalia), a thief willing to do whatever it takes to survive, with the reluctant duo soon discovering that these cramped tunnels are home to a gigantic species of predatory arachnid.
What follows is a claustrophobic thriller almost completely confined to cavernous sets and dimly lit corridors, with Sparke characterizing the location itself as an even greater antagonist than the supernaturally large spiders. In theory, this premise alone should be worth the price of admission, as a down-to-earth take on classic disaster movie tropes is an undeniably great idea, but it’s precisely the potential for a great genre experience that makes Scurry’s rushed script and poorly executed gimmick so frustrating.
While elaborate oners are a great way of establishing sustained tension, they only work if there’s always an element of interest onscreen to keep viewers engaged, such as Birdman’s energetic soundtrack or Presence’s supernatural voyeurism. Unfortunately, Scurry’s confined setting and minimalist storytelling mean that there’s plenty of visual dead air during sequences that almost certainly would have been reduced to a quick montage in a regular production.This is made worse by the presence of obvious digital trickery meant to stitch together different shots.
That’s not to say that the illusion of a single take isn’t impressive, as the commitment to the real-time gimmick forces Luke and his team to find clever workarounds in order to deliver certain information to the viewer without breaking their own rules (which is why I appreciate the inclusion of a night-vision-enhanced camcorder that allows us brief looks at the creatures without breaking immersion), but you consistently get the feeling that the pacing would be much improved if we could cut away from repetitive reaction shots and constant crawling.
Of course, many of these issues can be blamed on the underdeveloped script, with the main problem here ultimately boiling down to how we’ve seen this kind of story before in movies like Cloverfield and even Gareth Edwards’ Monsters. Despite the unique premise, the screenplay contains no particularly original characters or story beats, and that’s not even mentioning the series of logical inconsistencies that make the otherwise apocalyptic situation seem quite silly.
Costa and Emalia do what they can to elevate the material, with Emalia in particular adding a lot of depth to her character through exaggerated reactions, but no amount of acting can make up for narrative twists and turns you can see coming from a mile away. Even the overly-dramatic ending feels more like a cop-out than a horrific punchline, though I get the feeling that it would have played out much better with a bigger budget.
Thankfully, the monster designs should provide arachnophobes with plenty of nightmare fuel, though as someone with no particular distaste for spiders, I frequently found myself wishing that the film had invested in practical effects work rather than CGI. I mean, the minimal lighting could have easily hidden the inherent jank of low-budget puppetry, and arachnid exoskeletons already move like creepy little animatronics. That being said, I appreciate the flick’s occasional moments of over-the-top gore, as well as how Sparke borrows a page from The Descent when it comes to allowing audiences to see more of the environment than the characters inhabiting it.
As a fan of street-level depictions of blockbuster situations (like what you might see in games like Disaster Report or City Shrouded in Shadow) and a vehement defender of indie filmmakers doing their best to invade creative spaces usually dominated by large studios, I managed to enjoy Scurry despite recognizing that it would have been more entertaining as a short film – or maybe even a briskly paced found footage flick where the monsters only appear during night-vision segments.
Scurry probably won’t crawl its way onto any best-of-the-year lists, with its shallow characters and derivative story making it feel more like someone’s half-remembered dream of a movie rather than an actual film, but there’s still enough memorable imagery here to keep it from being a slog. Just make sure to bring some bug spray if you choose to watch this one.
