ROW (2025)
3 stars
Kaleidoscope Entertainment. World premiere at Raindance Film Festival. 21st June
Megan (Bella Dayne) has been rescued and is recovering in bed in a makeshift hospital in a guest house in the Island of Hoy in Orkney. She has drifted a long way, as she was part of a small crew attempting a world record rowing across the Atlantic from Newfoundland in Canada to Ireland in just 28 days.
She appears to be the only survivor – as she has traumatic visions of what has happened along the way, flashbacks fill in the story. They set off with great hope of achieving their goal – Daniel (Akshay Khanna), Lexi (Sophie Skelton) and Mike (Nick Skaugen), who replaced Adam (Mark Strepan) at the last minute.
As two of them row, the other two rest in the limited, cramp conditions on board their small, but sophisticated, row boat. However, as things progress, they start to go awry. Paranoia sets in and relationships break down. Unexpected occurrences start to slow them down.
But what happened out in the ocean? DCI MacKelly (Tam Dean Burn) is determined to get to the truth of how she survived and what happened to her crew mates…
A well acted psychological thriller, this makes extensive use of sound to create atmosphere, as it drip feeds the incidents that have lead to Megan being the only one left alive. The problem here is that it takes too long to get anywhere (bit like the boat) and is slightly overlong in the telling. When it finally does reveal what happened, was it worth the journey… sadly, not really.
