Bushwick

Lucy (Brittany Snow) is taking her boyfriend Jose (Arturo Castro) to meet her family for the first time. As they are leaving the subway station things are eerily quiet and the announcer says the station is closing as all services are suspended. Lucy dismisses this as just usual Brooklyn bullshit.

No good will come of this.

This is a quite daring piece showing ordinary people getting caught up directly in the opening hours of a modern Civil War simply by the fact of having it happen to a moderately affluent American on home soil without pretending "it couldn't happen here", years before Alex Garland did the same with much more fanfare.

Great sections of it are faux single takes showing the unfolding violent horror with the collapse of law and order and ordinary people being shot in the street as they attempt to flee.

Where it falls down is in being incredibly cheap with questionable acting and quite low rent action scenes by modern standards.

Lucy ends up being helped by a troubled veteran Stupe (Dave Bautista) who was early into his "I'd like to do serious roles now please" phase so he's clearly still learning his craft.

This all makes it sound objectively bad but it's not, it has a certain something perhaps from the relentless chaotic flow as it follows them block by block through a terrible day in the neighbourhood of Bushwick. It barely pauses to tell you what's going on and when it does that jars.

Interesting but held back by its own cheapness 6/10. It makes me want to check out anything the directors make in the future though.