Film / No Exit

Who will survive the dead of winter?

No Exit is a thriller film released in 2022 on Hulu and on Disney+'s Star channel in other territories. The film is based on the 2017 novel of the same name by Taylor Adams.

Recovering drug addict Darby Thorne escapes rehab to visit her mother who has fallen ill in Salt Lake City. After the road is closed due to a blizzard, Darby heads to a rest stop to wait out the storm. There, she discovers a kidnapping in progress and begins to unravel a disturbing plot.

The film stars Havana Rose Liu, Danny Ramirez, Mila Harris, David Rysdahl, Dale Dickey, and Dennis Haysbert. It was directed by Damien Power and written by Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari.

This Work Contains Examples Of:

• Action Survivor: Darby makes it through the night mostly in one piece after having fought like hell against both of the kidnappers.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Both Ash and Lars get their just deserts after attempting to kidnap the young Jay. Not only are they dead by the end of the story, but end up killed in a painful and quite humiliating fashion: Lars by a nail piercing his skull after slipping on a puddle of blood, and Ash slowly bleeding to death right after he started to insult and torture Darby.
  • As a downplayed example, Jay is shown to have been a brat before her abduction, tormenting Sandi, her employee at the time. While it doesn't justify the crime, it does make her less of a martyr.
• Beard of Evil: Ash sports a devil goatee and moustache while being the film's most vile and brutal character. This is further contrasted with the "old veteran" beard Ed sports.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • Applies to both Ash and Sandi as, initially, they seem like welcoming and jovial people, but are soon revealed to have had a hand in Jay's kidnapping.
  • The only time we see Jay pre-kidnapping, she's an obnoxious Spoiled Brat that does everything in her power to torment Sandi.
• Bittersweet Ending: Darby is the sole survivor of the cabin group and was unable to see her mother before she died. However, she was able to kill Ash and Lars, save Jay, and is implied at the end to be on the road to reconciling with her sister.
• Black Dude Dies First: Ed is the first one to die in the film, getting shot by Ash after Sandi lets him and Lars into the cabin.
• Black Sheep: Darby's addiction put a wedge between herself and the rest of her family; nobody even wants her present at the bedside of her critically ill mother. In the end, she and her sister end up reconciling.
• Blatant Lies: In a flashback, we can see Sandi telling police with a straight face that she didn't hear anything during the kidnapping, for she was vacuuming and with headphones on. While she says that, it cuts to her just standing there, with her headphones on her neck and clearly enjoying what she's hearing.
• Boom, Headshot!:
  • A downplayed example. When Jay wrestles with Ash for the nail gun, he accidentally shoots Lars in the head. However, this doesn't kill him right away and he dies after falling over, driving the nail deeper into his skull.
  • Ash straight-up executes Sandi, putting the gun to the back of her head while she's kneeling over Ed's body.
• Brick Joke: The "thoughts and prayers" line gets a Black Comedy reprisal in the finale.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Both Ed and Darby are fully aware they are alive for only as long as they are needed. And they're proven right, for Ash kills Ed the second he's no longer useful.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The small bag of drugs. Darby uses them to dull the pain when she has to un-nail herself off the wall
  • The snap knife. While Darby is unable to rescue Jay on her own, she still left behind the knife — and Jay frees herself, which kick-starts second act.
• Crucified Hero Shot: When Ash restrains her, Darby is forcefully positioned in such a way. Bonus points for being literally nailed to the wall to stay like this.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Lars ends up with a nail from the nail-gun in the forehead. That doesn't kill him outright and might not even be lethal by itself, if not for him slipping on Ed's blood, hitting the ground with his forehead and driving the entire nail down his cranium.
• Determinator: Darby manages to kill Ash despite a bullet wound to the gut and crawls to the radio of the dead police officer to call for help.
• Dies Wide Open: Lars has his eyes open after the nail finally goes through his skull.
• Driven to Suicide: Darby's father died by suicide, implied to be as a result of PTSD.
• Dwindling Party: The main five in the cabin start to die one by one as the movie progresses..
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Ash is a monstrous human being who kidnapped a young girl, but still deeply cares for his brother, Lars, and is turned into a rattled mess when he accidentally shoots him in the head with a nail gun.
  • Sandi certainly isn't too pleasant, having had a part in the kidnapping and all, but she truly loves Ed and took the job for both their sake. Once he dies, she becomes inconsolable.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Sandi assisted in the kidnapping but was under the impression it was for a ransom. When she finds out Ash and Lars are actually preparing to sell Jay in a trafficking ring, even she's horrified.
  • Unlike Ash, Lars is unwilling to really hurt Jay and fully believes that she'll be trafficked off to a good home, whereas Ash doesn't care.
• Evil Is Petty: Ash spitefully shares the story of Darby's dad's suicide to the others after she's learned of the kidnapping plot.
• Feel No Pain: Downplayed. In the finale, Darby snorts the drugs she stole with her car. As a result, she's so high, she shrugs off the pain of removing the nail driven through her wrist and later is surprisingly mobile for someone with an abdomen gunshot wound. None of this means there is no pain — it's just heavily dulled.
• Flashback Nightmare: While asleep at the side of the road, Darby has a nightmare about a past incident where she overdosed in her car and her sister found her, likely leading to their present-day estrangement.
• Forced to Watch: Several characters are forced to watch others get physically tortured, in the hopes that just seeing the pain inflicted will get them to talk.
• Framing Device: The painting of the mountainous landscape gets a match-cut in the ending with an actual landscape and then turns back into the painting, as Darby is back to rehab.
• Freudian Excuse: Ash and Lars's foster father is their ringleader who groomed them into the criminal lifestyle.
• Gorn: Surprisingly, the film has a lot of blood at times. Highlights include Darby's wrist getting nailed to the wall and Lars' death where he's shot in the head with a nail gun and is still walking and talking for a bit before falling down, which drives the nail through his skull.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The film cuts to Darby and Jay's reactions just before Ash shoots Sandi in the head.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Uncle Kenny, the uncle of Ash and Lars and the one who put them up to the kidnapping job. We never learn anything about him apart from his name and how he runs a child trafficking ring.
• Hope Spot: Darby is able to get the car started and is ready to drive away from the cabin, which is when Ash comes out of the burning cabin and wildly shoots at her car, hitting her tire and causing her to crash.
• Idiot Ball: Darby continues to hold Ash at gunpoint as a police officer arrives on the scene and refuses to drop the gun even when ordered. Unsurprisingly, she ends up getting shot.
• In the Back: Ash flat-out executes Sandi, pressing the barrel of the gun to the back of the turned head.
• Jerkass: Ash is this after The Reveal, continuously mocking Darby's dad's suicide and becoming increasingly hostile towards everyone except his brother, Lars.
• Kiss of Distraction: Darby kisses Ash to get Lars off of her trail when he suspects that she's been in his van.
• Lack of Empathy: Ash has absolutely no qualms whatsoever about kidnapping, torture, killing or child trafficking.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Sandi took part in the kidnapping but is clearly distressed with where the whole thing is heading. She tries to make sure Jay isn't hurt and draws a line upon learning there is no ransom and she just helped two child traffickers.
• Locked in a Room: A snowstorm forces bunch of random strangers into a remote tourist welcoming center somewhere in the Sierra Nevadas and once the weather goes to shit, they are effectively stranded inside.
• Meaningful Echo: The painting in the rehab center at the beginning of the film is shown again at the end, where Darby reconnects with her sister after the death of their mom.
• Minimalism: Two sets, with grand majority of the plot happening in just one of them. Seven characters and seven extras. And yet enough to make a suspenseful story.
• Nail 'Em: The nail gun gets an impromptu modification to allow to use it without a wall sticking right behind it. What's more surprising is that it serves its intended use, too.
• Near-Villain Victory: Ash manages to cover most of his tracks, shoots Darby and kills Corporal Hill, has a working vehicle while the blizzard finally dies down, and has the advantage that nobody will show up on site for several hours. Then Darby manages to fatally wound him.
• Nice Guy: Ed is a fairly pleasant guy to be around most of the time and even tears Ash a new one after he tells everyone about Darby's dad committing suicide after coming home from military service.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: Once he has a nail put into his forehead, Lars is reduced into semi-coherent blabbering. However, it might as well be the sheer shock of what just happened, rather than the wound itself, for it's not that deep.
• Obviously Evil: Lars is a plain, unstable, unkempt-looking young man with anger issues, and it's pretty much a no-brainer that he's the abductor. This then becomes subverted when it's revealed that the handsome and charismatic Ash is not only the second kidnapper, but the more brutal and sociopathic one.
• Old, Dark House: A twist on the trope. The rest stop serves as the backdrop to the driving question of who has kidnapped Jay and why.
• Pet the Dog: Ash genuinely loves and cares about Lars, enough to be willing to abandon the kidnapping in order to get him help. When the latter dies, it sets him off and makes him attempt to kill Darby and Jay by any means necessary.
• The Reveal: A twofer. Downplayed however, as the film doesn't focus on the identity of the kidnapper and instead is more of a survive-the-night thriller.
  • The first is when Darby and Ash plan to ambush Lars and rescue Jay. However, while Darby is trying to comfort Jay, she reveals that there were two men kidnapping her. This is immediately followed with Ash filling Lars in on Darby, revealing to the audience that he's the second kidnapper.
  • The second comes after Jay reawakens inside the cabin during the standoff between the two groups. She quickly recognizes Sandi as "Mrs. Lowery", her nanny who was in on the kidnapping as well.
• Semper Fi: Invoked and extensively discussed. Ed is a former Marine and so was Darby's father. Even long after retirement, Ed clearly strives to live by the Marine code.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Ed is a downplayed example of this trope, displaying some sensitivity towards the topic of his service but apart from that, he's fairly well adjusted. It's implied Darby's father went through some crisis, which lead to his eventual suicide.
• Snowed-In: A blizzard traps the cast inside a remote tourist center, cutting out any way of getting out or communicating with the outside world.
• Sole Survivor: Of the main five in the cast, only one makes it out alive by the end of the night.
• Stupid Crooks: Ash and Lars operate predominately on sunk-cost fallacy and thus keep making bigger mistakes and adding worse and worse crimes to the tally, all in futile attempt to get the original plan done.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The film shows why Reusable Lighter Toss is a trope — a jerrycan worth of fuel is unable to be set ablaze in the blizzard, since the fire source are matches that instantly go out after being lit.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Part of the suspense is built on the fact that Darby is locked in a tourist center with bunch of regular people and first has to figure out who's the kidnapper.
• Too Dumb to Live: Instead of just guaranteeing Darby's death by shooting her from a distance, Ash chooses to taunt her up close and personal with her father's suicide one last time, allowing her to stab him to death with a screwdriver.
• What You Are in the Dark:
  • Darby is a drug addicted no-gooder that opens the film by escaping from the rehab in a stolen car and tries to reach her family, which clearly doesn't want to have to do anything with her. But when facing a child kidnapping, she spends the entire plot risking her life for a little girl she doesn't know and potentially being alone against an entire gang.
  • Ed even openly invokes this, reminding that he's a Marine and he just won't stand to the crime happening. He pays with his life for this, but he doesn't mind.
    Ash: Stupid is getting yourself killed for a stranger.
    Ed: I'm a Marine, you idiot. It's what we do.
  • Sandi is far less scrupulous. Due to financial troubles she sided with the kidnappers and let them take a little girl she was caring for. While she ends up regretting doing so, she also feels self-justified for her actions due to mistreatment and in order to support her partner, consistently sticks with the kidnappers — even when it means betraying said partner.
• Wham Line:
  • When Darby removes Jay's gag, the first thing the girl asks is where are the men who abducted her. Darby has an Oh, Crap! moment as she realizes that she unwittingly gave her plan away to Ash, now revealed as the second kidnapper.
  • When both groups are facing off and tensions are high, Jay lets out one of these:
  Jay: [recognizing Sandi] Mrs. Lowery?
• Would Hit a Girl: Ash kicks the absolute shit out of Darby and even goes as far as to nail her wrist into a wall.

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