- Directed by: Matthew Lasasso
- Written by: Matthew Lasasso, Nick Skaugen
- Stars: Sophia Skelton, BVella Dayne, Akshay Khanna
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 58 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXXIGxG6WkE
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
An expedition on a pretty small four-person rowboat is meant to set a world record by going across the Atlantic Ocean. We get to cheat a little and see the ending of the expedition first, then we go back and gradually see what led up to that ending. In the claustrophobic setting, things get worse and worse as things go wrong and the quartet starts turning on each other. It’s very well crafted, tense, and fascinating. We both really liked it.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on a deserted-looking boat with bloodstains and wreckage everywhere. One woman is alive, clearly in shock, and there are two dead people on the deck. Credits roll.
Megan wakes up in bed, delirious, with an older man and woman there. Apparently she and the boat washed up with her the only survivor.
We cut to Newfoundland, Canada, as Daniel records his warnings and expectations about their upcoming expedition, rowing across the Atlantic. Their four-person team plans to cross the Atlantic in a small boat, but they’re going to row all the way. Megan is going along, leaving her mother, who has terminal cancer.
Megan arrives at The Valiant and meets Mike, a new guy. Daniel and Lexi are there as well, and the four start rowing. We cut back and forth between Megan in her recovery bed and the early stages of the row. The hospital man says he’s a policeman DCI MacKelly and she’s been there for two weeks; she’s suffering from malnutrition.
On the boat, they’ve been preparing for this 28-day journey for the past two years. They’re off course, so Mike has to dive under the boat to see if something’s wrong. There’s a rubber hair band in the rudder, and it’s burned out their steering motor. Daniel thinks it wasn’t an accident. The only one who was alone with the boat was Mike, but why would he do it? Mike was a replacement for Adam, who broke his leg at the last minute.
On board the boat, Mike gets sick, throws up, and then gets the shivering, hallucinating kind of fever. The boat barely survives a storm and a huge wave. Megan gets an incoming satellite call from Adam, who also recently broke up with Lexi; she’s the other woman on board. Mike deliriously threatens Daniel with a knife for hiding Rachel on the boat, which is obviously not true. Daniel whacks him over the head, knocking him out.
DCI MacKelly, in the hospital, says there’s no record of anyone named Mike having anything to do with the expedition. In fact, a search by his first and last name doesn’t turn up anyone with that name existing at all.
On the boat, in the morning, Mike recovers and feels fine, but everyone else is surprisingly quiet. We get a flashback and see that Megan was the other woman in the Adam-Lexi romance. We see that Daniel is trying to call his father to dig up more information about Mike.
A wave hits and capsizes the boat; everyone goes in the water. Megan gets knocked out and nearly drowns, but everyone ends up OK except the boat’s battery, which is dead. Because Mike didn’t latch the waterproof cover properly.
Somehow, they’re also short on food, which shouldn’t be possible. They only have nine days of rations left, and Lexi blames Daniel for throwing it all out. He ends up admitting it, but that may be just out of rage and not something he actually did. Mike jokes that they could throw Daniel overboard and no one would ever know. Lexi seriously considers it, but Megan is appalled at the idea.
The next day, all the water pouches are empty. That’s even worse than losing the food. Daniel again gets the blame, but he swears it had to be Mike. Mike and Lexi attack Daniel, tie him up, but Lexi bangs her head badly. She’s not dead but knocked out. Daniel says Mike killed his own girlfriend, Rachel, and is on the run from the police.
Megan has Daniel and Mike row toward a shipping lane– at knifepoint. Day 28 arrives, and they lose out on the World Record. Daniel tells mostly-unconscious Lexi all his personal problems.
Next thing we see, Lexi is dead. There’s another big wave, and Megan goes overboard again. When she gets back on, she considers cutting Daniel’s safety line loose and then just disconnects it. The current soon carries him away. She then helps Mike back on board.
Out of water and food, Megan and Mike keep on rowing. Mike tells her what happened to Rachel, who simply went missing. She admits to him that she unhooked Daniel and watched him die. He, in turn, admits that he did kill Rachel; he stabbed her during an argument. The boat rocks, and she stabs him completely by accident, a bad wound but not fatal.
At the hospital, Megan hears that one of the young men from the voyage has been recovered and will be here soon. There is tension as we wonder who it is, and they take their time showing us.
Back on the boat, they’re both starving. Mike catches a fish, but the exertion on his wounds makes him fall overboard. Megan eats the fish raw. The next day, the boat crashes at an island. She’s found not long after.
Megan in the now watches as a boat approaches the island and gets out of bed. She goes downstairs to see who it is that the police are bringing in. DCI MacKelly says he’s still got to ask the man some questions, but he doesn’t say who it is. He handcuffs Megan to the bed and mentions that they found Lexi’s body with a fatal wound to her head.
MacKelly brings the man upstairs, and it’s only Adam, broken leg and all. He doesn’t know anything about the voyage, and Megan tries to conceal her relief. Adam says the police aren’t buying her story. When they are alone he admits that he was the one who sabotaged their rudder and food supply and water packets so that they would turn back. He didn’t plan on Daniel being so stubborn. He sticks to the story that Mike never existed and that Megan’s just insane. He tells the cops that when he waved the boat off, there were only three people on board.
DCI MacKelly arrests Megan for two murders, Lexi and Daniel. He doesn’t believe “Mike” existed. Adam limps back outside, the real villain of the story.
Brian’s Commentary
I was immediately reminded of “The Sound” (2025), another film about a sporting activity that the filmmakers took very seriously and crammed in a little horror at the end. I found the boating stuff more interesting than the mountain climbing in the other film, but that’s not really what we signed up for. It’s clear that this one was also shooting for realism, and it succeeded there. The whole thing is fairly realistic in the way it plays out, even the way all four or five main characters interact.
The four main actors all do well, and by switching between the boat and the hospital, it doesn’t get too monotonous, which it would have if it had all been on the boat. I guessed who it was coming to the island to confront Megan fairly early, but didn’t see his reveal coming.
We both liked this one quite a bit!
Kevin’s Commentary
I thought this was gripping. And it was well done going with the flashing back and forth between the past and the present. Going into it, I was fearing tedium a little, given that it’s almost two hours long, but I was fully invested. The cast is good, the story was clever, and I would call it a win.