The first thing you should know about "Salvage" is that it's not a typical gore-heavy slasher flick. Although there's gore and at least one really heavy slash (you'll know the one I'm talking about when it happens), "Salvage" is more of a film for the mind along the lines of the quiet thrillers "The Sixth Sense", "The Others" or even going back to the 70s with the likes of "The Wicker Man" and "The Stepford Wives". All of these are films with a powerful, novel concept told without a whole lot of blood & guts but with a heavy punch at the end.
The minute I saw that this film was one of the films selected for the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, I knew to expect something different, and that's indeed what we get. Shot on a super low indie budget of $25,000 (compared to its more famous 2006 box office competitor "Silent Hill" which had a budget of $50 Million), "Salvage" doesn't give us many bells & whistles, no flashy cgi effects, no colossal sets or zombie makeup, and for that reason if you're looking for a mindless popcorn spiller, you might want to look elsewhere and save yourself 80 minutes. However, if you're prepared for a quieter, more thinking type of thriller flick, then this will be perfect.
When I say "thinking type of thriller flick", I don't mean you have to struggle to understand what's happening. Rather, the challenge is in trying to guess *why* it's happening. And I gotta say, the explanation totally surprised and impressed me. It's the kind of ending that makes you think for a long time afterwards.
The cons: Yes, in my title I mentioned that I hated it. This is because at times the film seemed to fight against itself. On one hand it presented itself as a deep, challenging mystery, but this was undermined by a lot of cheap horror flick clichés (the predictable fake scares, unnecessary schlock, and particularly some ridiculously overt sound effects and audio cues. For example there's a scene where a character finds a small trinket that is of significance, which 80% of the audience will recognize immediately, but the audio department decided to hammer it home with a silly "tinkerbell" sound effect as if to say "THIS IS SIGNIFICANT!" Moments like that are peppered throughout the film, and after a while it felt like the filmmakers were treating us like idiots who need tinkerbell sounds whenever something important happens. I suppose the horror genre isn't exactly meant for beard-stroking philosophers, but still, I think the film should have stuck with a subtle, challenging approach which would have been more fitting for the cryptic mystery that is unfolding.
But like I said, the ending really impressed me, and that along with the excellent acting by our main character Claire (Lauren Currie Lewis in her first headlining feature performance) makes this film a great watch. A note about Lauren's acting: she plays a very believable character, confused, terrified, and yet not a shrieking idiot like a lot of horror flick protagonists. She does utter a few great shrieks, especially her absolutely bone-chilling screams during the aforementioned "heavy slasher" scene, but for the most part the power of her acting came in her realistic portrayal of how a normal person would react to these extremely abnormal events happening around her.
I highly recommend this film to anyone who's looking for a mostly-quiet horror flick with a good, philosophical spin. Major props to the filmmakers who pulled this off on such a low budget. For what it aims to do it's truly in league with the best.
