A classic scenario: dangerous man and innocent kid on the road, her presence eventually reveals his soft side, as much as he tries to hide it. He learns from her and finds a purpose in protecting her. Some shit goes down and he tries to find redemption and we have a hard time not feeling something for him. In the case of SHE RIDES SHOTGUN (based on the book by Jordan Harper), the kid is Polly (Ana Sophia Heger) and the man is her father, Nate McClusky (Taron Egerton, CARRY-ON). When her mom doesn’t show up to pick her up after school, and her dad shows up all frazzled, she’s definitely scared. Asks if he’s supposed to be there. Yeah, he got out, he says.
Man, this starts out dark. We figure out before she does that her mom and stepdad just got murdered. We assume Nate did it and now he’s kidnapping her. He’s in a hotwired car (all he can afford right now, he says) and trying to lay low at a cheap hotel by the airport. When she sees the double homicide on the news he tells her it wasn’t him, it was this prison gang that’s after him, that’s who he’s running from and trying to protect her from. Too late though, she already called the task force phone number. So she tells him they have to go. (read the rest of this shit…)
I’m real late to the dinner party (get it, because this is a movie about a dinner party), but THE INVITATION is a potent suspense thriller well-deserving of its reputation from film festivals and indie circuit release from Drafthouse Films. It’s tense and uncomfortable and it’s best not to know what sort of bad thing it’s leading up to, but don’t worry. You can sense its presence from early on.
