Leah (Lydia Kelly), Kate (Cecily Elliott), and Ayden (Ben Rigby) are on the run in a post-apocalyptic USA with a dangerous new threat hot on their heels. As danger inches ever closer, Leah is forced to make a life-altering decision and confront her feelings if she and the others hope to survive their ordeal. Welcome to writer/director Scott Talbot’s dangerous reality of The One That Got Away.
The setting is a wilderness in the Pacific Northwest region. While the setting may not be groundbreaking for making the obvious choice, especially since Hollywood and nearly all independent films tend to confine themselves to the many woodlands and backwater towns of America, it’s a mighty and scenic setting, framed beautifully with magnificent river bends and Douglas fir trees standing proudly in the background. Marrying the sharp camerawork of Ben Meserve and the riveting score of Shireen Ghosh, Talbot is operating at a very meticulous technical level and has enough intrigue tucked away in his screenplay to walk the walk when it’s down to the wire.
Leah takes the lead in what is essentially a burgeoning love triangle between the survivors. Kate and Ayden are together, with Leah struggling to make do with her friendship with Kate and the emotions she is suppressing. That, of course, means she does not get along with Ayden—something he reciprocates with his irritable exterior. The three of them aren’t alone either, and soon enough, Leah is in the hot seat, having to make a tough call for the group’s future.
From its stellar production design, slick direction, and acting, The One That Got Away behaves like it’s building into something bigger or is serving as a continuation to something we, the audience, missed out on. This could very easily be Talbot’s proof of concept for a feature or a series. With that in mind, the script can sometimes leave some details to be desired, especially as far as establishing character motivations that goes beyond a superficial level. Of course, zooming above the tree line with drones is cool, and so are the abandoned locations they trudge through, but it feels as if there isn’t enough meat on the bones of either major player, narratively speaking. Simply put, more context is needed. Where Talbot does succeed, however, is in making the viewer ask questions about the world he created. There are numerous little details sprinkled throughout the short that sow the seeds for a potential expanding of this story.
Gritty yet gorgeous, The One That Got Away is a tense dystopian drama with terrific feature-length implications.
