I really wanted to like the Cameron Francis starring, directed and written thriller Cover, his feature length directorial debut in fact. Early problems I had with the duel protagonists motives really got in my head and I ended up finding myself incapable of taking either of them seriously.
Trevor (Francis) is a travelling salesman who is on a cross country journey to go and sell some rare stamps known as 'covers'. Stopping in a diner for some lunch, he is disturbed by a young woman named Macy (Katherine Lozon in her film debut). She tells Francis that she is on the run from her abusive boyfriend, and begs the man for a ride. This begins an odd road trip in which two people, both suspicious and paranoid about the other, slowly start to get comfortable with each other's eccentricities. This, set to the backdrop of a mysterious car tailing the man.
Straight away I had a real issue with the main characters, both of which I both didn't like, and didn't trust. The way it creates a sense of paranoia that one of the two isn't being truthful was well done, it's just this mistrust stayed with me for the entire film. Even moments that are designed to be sentimental came across as fake and phony, and so that made the central 'buddy' style friendship fall flat. The characters dialogue and the way they said their lines felt grandiose and more wordy than they needed to be. The character of Trevor had a way of talking that often made me feel that Closer may be a comedy thriller, it always felt like he was playing to a crowd. Macy on the other hand was dodgy from the start. For someone apparently fleeing domestic abuse, Macy has a right attitude on her, and plenty of sass to boot.
Much of the film takes place out on the road, or at one of the various places the leads have stopped to rest, and for the first forty or fifty minutes things go along as expected. I did think the second act was a great idea, with events in the story rewound to show them playing out from a different perspective. As cool as that part was, there wasn't a smooth transition for key characters, so it made story beats feel very trite and forced. The thrills are relatively light here, but there was a fantastic looking late film death sequence, even if that follows into a bit of an abrupt and unsatisfying finish.
Cover was a film that just never hooked me. Due to the strange protagonists, I could never take anything they said seriously, which really affected my enjoyment of their journey. I spent most the film expecting twists and turns that never came to fruition. The story was fine, but there was just something a little missing here. Cover releases on August 26th via The Horror Collective.
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