Reaching Distance's history feels like a 1990's edition of Changing Rooms. "Can you take a scrapyard bus and with a few thousand dollars make a movie?".
In his feature-length debut, David Fairhurst has proven you can. More so, this is not a low budget indie that creeks and crackles. The lighting is good, sound crisp, staging excellent, acting solid and soundtrack impressive. Fairhurst's script, which uses few locations and a small core cast, is key to that. Altogether a smart and well-executed approach.
It must be said this route puts a lot of pressure on actor Wade Briggs as Logan. Reaching Distance is dialogue heavy. Briggs is in every scene and has significant dialogue in near-enough all of the movie's 93 minutes. Perhaps with such limited locations and transition between scenes that was inevitable. That's no small task and one which could have derailed proceedings. Thankfully Briggs rises to the challenge.
Reaching Distance is Logan's story, his grief, regret, denial and forgiveness. It explores the physical and psychological impacts of the car crash which killed his twin sister.
If one has to be critical, like a cross city bus ride, the plot is slow at times. It's also not always clear where the movie is going. When it gets there, the movie's genuine cleverness becomes apparent. You have to wait a little too long for that to become clear though. For video on demand, where it's easy to click the back button, an express route is needed. I'm just not convinced everyone's attention will hold that long.
Frustrating as I found that wait, Reaching Distance is ultimately worth it. Once over the initial delay, engaging twists arrive regularly and keep one surprised throughout. Congratulations to those involved, who have set a bar for indie quality. Despite some problems, it is a good psychological drama.
