Rent?/Don’t Buy: A Review of “Go/Don’t Go”
Adam (Alex Knapp) is our main (only?) character.
Adam is alone in his small upstate NY town and possibly the whole world. Everyone is gone, but all the structures are still standing. He wakes up every day and forages for food and supplies. He kills what seems like infinite time grocery shopping, wandering around, and listening to the radio. Is it the apocalypse? Is he in hell? Or a remake of that one “Twilight Zone” episode?
If Joe Swanberg directed “A Quiet Place,” it would resemble Writer/Director/Producer Alex Knapp’s “Go/Don’t Go.” Knapp plays Adam, a mysterious loner who flashes back to the “pre-apocalypse” world of crowded bars and human interaction, which totally doesn’t sound prescient at all right now. Adam’s girlfriend K (Olivia Luccardi of “It Follows” and “The Deuce”) shows up to flesh out his character in flashbacks and build out the world, but it’s mostly Adam’s show. Knapp likes to play with the idea that Adam’s isolation is an illusion and there was no “apocalypse,” which is an interesting angle, but not without its frustrations. The film meanders more often than it should. Sure, Adam’s life can be boring, but there’s no real driving force beyond his survival. You can almost imagine it working better as a short.
We regret to inform you: the shitter is full.
The title refers to a map Adam has, where he marks down places to avoid. He visits most of them and Knapp gets considerable milage out of the town’s barren locations. The supermarket is fully-stocked, but creepy and devoid of life. It’s easy to see how someone can go insane with the world off its axis. Overall, “Go/Don’t Go” is a lo-fi calling card for it’s star/director. It shows promise, but it doesn’t justify it’s feature runtime.
“Go/Don’t Go” is available now on VOD.
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