Nonton Film Valley of Ditches (2017) Full Movie
Nonton Film Valley of Ditches (2017) Full Movie Sub Indonesia
From writer/director Christopher James Lang and writer/star Amanda Todisco Valley of Ditches presents the story of three people in the desert. One alive, one dead, and the one who is responsible for it all.
Emilia (Todisco) manages to free herself from the front seat and begins to crawl her way across the desert. However, she doesn’t get far before the mysterious stranger (Russell Bradley Fenton) catches up to her. Her breaks her leg and takes her back to the spot where her deceased boyfriend Micahel (Jeremy Sless) lies next a freshly dug pit. Before shackling her to Michael and pushing them both into the pit, he explains to her that too many squander the gifts that God gives them. He further explains his own gift is recognizing the guilty and takes it upon himself to punish them.
With its non-linear storytelling, Valley of Ditches does a terrific creating tension and anxiety. Emilia struggles to find a way out the situation as day turns to night. As she drifts in and out of sleep she remembers her relationship with Michael. And as the snarls of desert wildlife begin to close in around the pit she flashes back to life with her abusive father . In Emilia, Lang and Todisco have created a character who has to overcome some unthinkable obstacles to survive. And even though she simply fighting for her own survival, Todisco performance makes you feel she is really fighting for something bigger.
One of the things I love about good indie film making is the way it forces directors to shoot around things that would otherwise betray the low budget. Valley of Ditches does do a good job of this, most of the time. However, the one weak spot is an odd decision to shoot a, less than convincing, prop in a way that comes close to taking me out of the film. Fortunately, Todisco’s performance in the scene is strong enough to overcome this. Quicker cuts and tighter shots could have potentially made this an amazing scene.
There are so many questions that come up during the film that go unanswered. But this is not a bad thing. The filmmakers are smart enough to know that not every question needs answer. Therefore we get a film that doesn’t feel cluttered with excess backstory and justifications. Instead it allows you to share the fear, heartbreak, and anger on a simple primal level with Emilia.
Do memories exist if there is no one left to remember them? This is one of the questions posed at the beginning of Valley of Ditches, the latest film from writer/director Christopher James Lang and Amanda Todisco, who co-wrote the screenplay and stars as Emilia.
The film opens with what is later revealed to be a flashback scene. Emilia, kidnapped and bound in a car out in the desert, is remembering a conversation she had with her boyfriend Michael while she watches someone digging a grave a short distance away. Immediately, our minds want to know: how did she get to this point? Yet the movie parcels out information in small bits, contrasting flashbacks to Emilia’s past with her current situation in such a way so that we feel like we’re experiencing things along with her.
Valley of Ditches is an effectively low-key affair, and shows its indie roots in its unfussy yet intensely focused cinematic style and subtle soundtrack.
Valley of Ditches is an effectively low-key affair, and shows its indie roots in its unfussy yet intensely focused cinematic style and subtle soundtrack. This doesn’t mean, however, that it comes across as amateurish. The cinematography and framing of scenes are both excellent. The early scenes of Emilia in the car rely heavily on what are intended to be her POV: reflections of her face in the rearview mirror and the gravedigger in the side view mirror. This gives the sequence an appropriately claustrophobic feeling, one that continues throughout the movie.
The setting is simple in the film, but powerful. Emilia does escape from the car she’s in, but she’s also in the middle of the desert without any transportation and someone wants to kill her, a potentially lethal combination. That person is Sean, and he’s already killed Emilia’s boyfriend. Again, our minds race: who is Sean and why did he kill Michael? We seem to have about as much information on Sean and his motives as Emilia does; he spouts a lot of quotes from the Bible and talks about sinning and penance and it’s obvious that he is not just a killer, but a delusional one.
This lack of back story, again, puts us right there in the thick of danger with Emilia, and it’s an extremely effective way of increasing suspense as well as our emotional stakes in the film’s narrative. Well-crafted flashbacks that help us to not only understand what kind of person Emilia is and but also invest us in her fate.
About one-third of the way into the film’s 89-minute run time, you start to feel like you’ve seen this before: a girl gets kidnapped and tortured but in the end she triumphs. There’s a little bit of Martyrs in Valley of Ditches, not in that film’s intense gore and violence, but in the sense of wanton cruelty. Yes, things get a lot worse for Emilia, and there is one scene that’s so graphic it almost made me physically ill. Valley of Ditches doesn’t shy away from the harsh truths of Emilia’s situation, and to avoid spoilers, I’ll just say that this holds true even when the threats against her are only heard and not seen.
Yet, the movie doesn’t go down the path I expected and its ending, which is simultaneously cathartic and depressing, is downright horrifying.
Yet, the movie doesn’t go down the path I expected and its ending, which is simultaneously cathartic and depressing, is downright horrifying. While sometimes the acting in Valley of Ditches feels a little stilted and the dialogue a bit heavy-handed towards the end, the movie transcends its micro-budget indie horror trappings to become a sobering meditation on something far beyond the seemingly simple scenario of a woman who has been kidnapped and is trying to escape.
There is a lot that Valley of Ditches never reveals, but that’s a good thing. The questions it poses are ones that are worth considering. I look forward to more films from Lang and Todisco.