Screwdriver comes out of the chute with a tense, creepy vibe. It never quite has enough juice to finish as well as it started, but the narrative ratchets up enough tension to keep us leaning forward for a majority of the run time.
Emily (Anna Clare Hicks) has come to the house of an old high school friend, Robert (Charlie Farrell) and his ice-cold wife, Melissa (Milly Sanders) Emily has just gone through a soul-crushing break-up, and this might be a nice respite.
Robert is immediately overly solicitous. Dude is verbally all over her for her indefinite stay. Meantime, wife Emily seems put out and put off, but she makes no complaints, even while Robert is complimenting Emily beyond comfort right in front of her.
Gradually, we feel that Emily isn’t exactly staying at the house because she wants to, but she has no place else to go in her current mental state. But it’s her choice.
There is very little movement in the silent, hygienically perfect house. Nothing is out of place – the director has skillfully made us wary of…well, of nothing, in a way. But that puts a burden on the dialog to do all the heavy lifting and here we are confronted by oblique, inscrutable dialog that (surely by design) is confusing and sometimes incomprehensible.
Alas, the stretching of the spring amounts to an anti-climactic pfft when the “reveal” comes.
There’s a lot of good in this movie, but Writer/Director Cairo Smith’s soft landing makes us wonder if we ever really took off.
Screwdriver is currently available on VOD
