Thom Eberhardt

(In French, On Cable TV, August 2022) There’s something almost interesting in Sole Survivor, especially during its first half, where it’s not clear what kind of horror film it’s trying to be. As the sole survivor of a plane crash gets disturbing visions and near-death incidents, then people around her die, it’s almost exciting to find a proto-Final Destination premise that goes beyond the slasher and monster-feature clichés. Are we in existential horror in which Death itself is the antagonist? There’s a delicious moment in which it’s possible. Alas, the film then goes into a much weirder and less satisfying direction: zombies. No, seriously—people come back from the dead and start killing others. Hmm. How did we get here? Writer-director Thom Eberhardt’s Sole Survivor still has some power if you don’t focus too much on its mechanics—the dreary phantasmagorical atmosphere is the kind of thing that horror fans will like even if the narrative doesn’t work, and you can’t deny the slightly-more ambitious goals of the film at a time when American horror wasn’t being particularly daring. However, the pacing is a bit slow, a stronger narrative might have helped and it constantly feels as if the film is just walking by a much stronger concept in its rush to get to its zombies. Sole Survivor is not necessarily a must-see, but it probably has one or two things that will be appreciated by jaded horror fans diving back in history.