Me Mini Movie Reviews: Water's Edge

Water’s Edge I was in one of those used DVD/CD stores perusing the sale bin, when I saw a movie I’d never heard called Water’s Edge. What caught my eye was the name Nathan Fillion as a headliner. The story sounded like an interesting thriller, and being it was priced below the cost of a weekly rental at Blockbuster, I picked it up. It’s an alright little movie. It’s kind of a thriller in the vein of an old film noir where your unassuming everyman gets caught up in a situation that turns into a mess and he has to react to protect himself and those around him. Fillion and Chandra West play a married couple that move out to a cabin outside a remote town to get away from things and rebuild their lives after something tragic happened. It’s a little slow moving at the beginning and you have to infer why they moved there, but it’s revealed quickly. After a fight between the two, Fillion’s character goes for a run through the nearby woods and stumbles onto a situation where he has to make a decision that changes everything. From there, it’s a ‘who did what’ cat and mouse game for survival. Nathan Fillion is really the main reason to watch this flick. He’s good in it, doing a milder version of his Mal Reynold’s character from Firefly. He’s got that capability to react with deadpan humor in bad situations and comes across as a man who is smarter, more dangerous, and unpredictable than he let’s on to those around him. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast is a bit of a mixed bag of nuts. The two female leads are a little stiff in their acting delivery, but Daniel Baldwin shows up to add a bit of evil smarminess to the proceedings. The plot is easy to follow after the first five minutes, and if you know film noir cynicism, pretty much every plot point is telegraphed about 20 miles away. Beyond that, the locations are nice to look at from the surroundings where they filmed in BC, Canada. If you’re a Browncoat, it’s worth checking out for Nathan Fillion. He’s always fun to watch. Otherwise, it’s a decent little flick that’s probably a pass for most people. It’s from 2003, so if you see it on cable some Saturday afternoon, give it a look. Probably not worth the full price of a rental, unless you can get it even cheaper, like I did. Verdict: Wait for TV.