There’s a scene early on in Autumn Road, a moment of innocence and tenderness between a young boy, Charlie, and his crush Winnie, with a haunted attraction on Halloween serving as the backdrop. It’s a genuinely sweet and touching moment that turns terrifying on a dime as Winnie, played wonderfully by Maddie Lea Hendrix, suffers an allergy attack. For the audience, it should be heartbreaking as we realize this boy’s terror and helplessness, but instead, it’s undercut by poor acting on the part of the actor playing Charlie, who gives such a stilted performance that the scene is robbed of any emotion. Charlie runs to his twin brother Vincent for help – both are played by real-life brothers – and the actor portraying Vincent comes off so mustache-twirlingly bad that it completely destroys whatever tension was left in the scene and causes it to border on camp. This is one of the many problems inherent with Autumn Road, where the film reaches moments of genuine heartfelt emotion only to end up immediately shooting itself in the foot.
Years later, Winnie hasn’t been seen since that fateful Halloween night, and her sister Laura, now grown and an aspiring actress, returns to her hometown as Halloween approaches. The twins, now adults, run a local haunted attraction that was once owned by their father. Charlie is the meek and shy one of the twins (we know this because he wears glasses) while Vincent is darker (we know this because he wears all black), and soon all three people’s lives between intertwined. It’s a premise that has plenty of potential – a woman who has never recovered from her sister’s disappearance strikes up a relationship with the two men who know the truth and have carried with them all their lives. Unfortunately, the film just meanders along, and there’s a lack of a clear through-line to all of this. There’s never a clear sense of what the characters want, especially when it comes to the character of Laura, who quickly fades into the background as the film is far more interested in the twins, played by writer/director Riley Cusick. Cusick is very convincing and likable as Charlie but it’s clear that the film doesn’t want to follow Charlie or Laura as much as it does Vincent. Unfortunately, Cusick comes off as trying too hard in the scenes where he plays Vincent, and the audience is never really given a reason to like or care about this character who only gets more insufferable as the film goes along. Vincent though is the one pushing the story along most of the time, as Charlie never really makes a choice and just reacts to the other characters. It’s a shame that Laura is the character that gets the short end of the stick as actress Laura Linklater’s performance is genuinely touching, especially during a flashback scene with her long-lost sister that’s the second-best moment in the film after the aforementioned opening.
Autumn Road is never quite sure what it wants to be, as there are times it veers between being a campy thriller or a character drama. Like the brothers, Charlie and Vincent, this film feels like two separate movies at odds with itself. If this is a character drama, it never dives deep enough into the psychology of these people and what drives them, and the characters never rise above having only one defining character trait each. As a thriller, it never builds any tension, suspense or stakes. So many scenes and performances go from zero to sixty that the viewer gets a feeling of whiplash, and many more scenes just feel disjointed or out of place. It all comes to a head at a rather abrupt and unsatisfying anti-climax that feels like the film never really knew where it was headed in the first place. Nothing gets resolved, no characters have grown or learned anything, and neither has the audience.
The idea of three damaged characters reconnecting at a haunted attraction around Halloween is one that’s rife with possibilities, but Autumn Road never quite lives up to its potential. There are some genuinely touching moments, but the lack of character motivation and tonal inconsistency makes this film seem like a collection of loosely intertwined scenes rather than a story about loss, guilt, and forgiveness. Autumn Road certainly looks great thanks to the excellent cinematography and set dressing, and the Halloween setting gives a unique atmosphere to the film that coupled with the story almost makes it feel like an “anti-Hallmark movie.” Unfortunately, the writing isn’t up to the same level as the imagery, and it feels like this script could have used another polish or two before it went before cameras. It’s a shame because when the film gets intimate, the moments of genuine emotion are wonderful, but most of the time it feels like the script is too afraid of getting close to the characters and only wants them to exist as caricatures instead. The character of Vincent hides beneath an owl mask at times in this movie, and like him, Autumn Road seems intent on pushing away the viewer by putting on a mask when things seem to be getting too genuine.
James Reinhardt