Rehab Cabin (2021 | USA | 77 mins | Kate Beacom & Louis Legge)
Besties Chloe (Lacey Jeka) and Dominic (Scott Mandel) spend hours, weeks and months together watching their favorite movies, most of which are throwbacks to their childhood and their favorites star actress Amanda Campbell (Alexandra Stebbins). Much to their disappointment, Miss Campbell has fallen down the spiral of addiction and hasn’t made a movie in way too long, but a chance encounter may change all that. The two decide to take Amanda to the woods “for her own good” at Dominic’s family cabin to give her a chance to dry out. As you can imagine, the aging actress isn’t into it and chaos ensues.
Like I mentioned in my preview, I had a feeling this would either go slapstick or dark comedy and turns out it was much more the latter. As a matter of fact I’d say it’s more akin to Misery than buddy comedy, but it seemed to work. There were parts of the editing and writing that could have used a little work but the outline of a good story was there. The characters needed to be fleshed out more.
It felt like I was missing out on something, like I couldn’t relate or understand what was motivating them to do these ridiculous things. While I would have liked to get a little deeper into her character (and maybe leave out the goofy montage) Stebbins convincingly plays the failing child actor. All in all, it’s got the bones of a good film but needed some work to really accomplish what it was attempting.
Rehab Cabin played in-person on September 16 at Local Sightings Fest but is available virtually through September 26. Follow other updates from year’s festival via our Local Sightings 2021 coverage.