Refuge Film Review – Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2014

November 4^th 2014:  Open up any newspapers these days and words like quarantine, epidemic, pandemic or the Center for Disease Control (CDC) could be found in many op-ed articles or the front page story for most major publications around the world.  The scourge of Ebola has been crisscrossing international borders with impunity.  As fear and misinformation continues to proliferate thousands within the West African diaspora continue to die.  This being today’s reality, together with the containment limitations that currently exist based on international travel destinations, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for a global pandemic to occur.

America has been gutted and hollowed out just like the rest of the world through the ravages of a global plague. Quiet isolation becomes more than a little disquieting. Cities become vacant shells with safety zones that are anything but safe.  Director Andrew Robertson has delicately coloured his canvas in a pallet of monochromatic hues and muddied colours that harken to a futureless wasteland rife with hoards of scavenging clans in this post-apocalyptic thriller, “REFUGE”.  Stay Hidden Stay Quiet Stay Alive; the family at the cornerstone of this narrative covets these words completely.  With the threat of pending carnage around every corner, Jake (Carter Roy), Nell (Amy Rutberg), and daughter Birdy (Eva Grace-Kellner) together with neighbour Kyle (Chris Kies) form the family holed up in an abandon farmhouse negotiating each dilemma through hushed conviction.

A much needed respite from their dour surroundings and daily descent was a quiet and beautifully shot 8^th birthday celebration (post-apocalyptic style) for the increasingly sick little Birdie.  Robertson effectively parallels the hide, seek and pillage paradigm within the storyline.  The opening volley of marauders who descend on an occupied farmhouse and unleash unsolicited carnage shows the breakdown of civilization and the dark side of the survival narrative.  Jake, the alpha of the family unit goes out to forage for food and much needed medicine as best he can hoping to avoid any human contact with the objective of coming back alive.  An air of human desperation hangs heavy in REFUGE right from the opening scene which is maintained throughout.  When Jake bring home Russell (Sebastian Beacon) a young man injured in a motorcycle accident whose linked to the savage clan, internal family struggles begin.