Budget: Can't find
Directed By: Micheal Nader
The Toll, well, well. This film has all the hallmarks of a winner. An authentic story small tight cast of pretty decent semi-known actors.
Add to that a writing/directorial debut too with a plot that has some good supernatural chills.
Which is unfortunately destroyed in the last act with a VERY shitty reveal that undermined everything that has been built up until then.
As I stated the acting is reasonably good especially from Jordan who is the most veteran actor in the film.
All the characters seem to be believably playing the role they've been given.
It s a story we've seen a number of times people drive get stuck on a road they can't escape from but it's the extra stuff (until the last act as stated) that makes for a decent watch.
So lets get on with this very annoyingly let down of a movie.
So needing to get to her fathers ranch after a late flight in, Cami (Hayes) gets a late night uber type service. It's 1am so she's a dubious of the guy that come to pick her up, Spencer (Topplin) is her driver and he seems to be a socially awkward individual which doesn't fill her with confidence also.
So worried about Spencer they drive off, the guy tries to make terrible small talk to which Cami just asks him to keep quite. She not exactly a likable character and at this point I was routing more for Spencer to be honest.
Especially when he relays fears that he's just as afraid of being killed by his passengers as they are of being killed by him. She does seem to soften a bit until he says about his bow and arrow and hunting humans, as a joke (that's a bit silly either way).
Cami freaks out a little more when Spencer takes a turning on his app that she's never been down before and berates him for it, he says it's told him to go down there.
Of course the car breaks down, Cami thinks Spencer is to blame, she goes to walk off to look for help, Spencer gives her a torch so she can see in the dark and at her request stays in the car. Down the road, the way they've come up Cami encounters stop signs and barricades telling her the roads closed.
Confused she carries on. Back at the car Spencer thinks he see's something and goes to the back of the car. It's about then Cami walks down from the opposite side she left from all confused as to how.
She surmises it's a round road and then Spencer shows her the writing on the car says they must pay the toll man.
Cami freaks both of them out by saying it could be those people that pull people over to rob and kill them, Spencer says they'd have done it already if it was. He goes off into the wood and comes full circle too. A little while later an older woman ride down the road on a tractor.
After they explain their situation to her she look at them in terror and sorrow. She explains they're on the Toll mans road now and he wants a toll in blood from them, she knows because it once happened to her, especially so if one of them was thinking bad thoughts like suicide or murder. This was odd and strangely out of place to me but well exposition i guess.
So growing trust the two both start to look down a detour way that they're told will be their only escape from the road and the Toll Man. Though they still do get at loggerheads as it's the Toll Man's 'thing' to try turn them against each other. Some of the things they see allude to abuse in Cami's life and insecurity in Spencer's. They do seem to break each other out of it by being like look it's not real maybe a bit too many times. Then remembering another thing the woman said that He can only affect you if he can see you they get back to the car and blackout all the windows.
Fine you might say, but it's about here that the film devolves very rapidly, exposing shit plot holes and destroying any of the previous character development. So they forget about the camera in the car and it starts to show them messages to kill the other one. Now here at THN we rarely spoil films endings but I'm sorry I just have to here I can't let you watch this albeit only 80 minute film and think it's okay only to be shot down by the dribbly ending.
SPOILERS AHEAD STOP READING IF YOU WANT TO WATCH
Turns out Spencer is a fucking rapist killer and it's his thoughts that got them on the Toll Man's road, this guy who I had previously thought was just a misunderstood anti-socialite, who i'd been routing for because Cami was and still is a bit of a mouthy bitch. This repartee they built and the whole way the film was going is just derailed here. So he tries to kill Cami to escape the road with his bow, she pretends to be dead, then kills him when he comes over to have a look, rather than just shoot her a few more times with arrows, specifically in the head.
Now I'm all for subverting expectations but to just have the guy turn out, in a supernatural based movie just to be a typical murdering dick is just meh to me when it could have gone so many more interestingly different ways.
THN awards The Toll (2020) 1 star out of 5 for decent performances by the leads.
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