Enthusiasm Is Main Draw of Director John Rosman’s First Full-Length Feature, ‘New Life’

“New Life,” a film touted as a “genre blender,” is director John Rosman’s first full-length feature and, yeah, one can tell. It’s a hodgepodge, Mr. Rosman’s picture, and less blended than lumpy. The stitchery shows in the overdetermined symmetry of its two-pronged storyline and in cinematic tics that are studied when they’re not flashy. The editing is tricked-up and the supra-orchestral soundtrack feels tacked-on — that is, when it isn’t overbearing. At this point in Mr. Rosman’s career, enthusiasm trumps ability.Still, enthusiasm isn’t an attribute to be completely discounted, particularly when it results in a picture as peculiar in its details as this one. “New Life” is well within the realm of established conventions, being a mash-up of paranoid spy thriller (the government is out to get us) and biological horror chiller (our bodies are out to get us). Echoes of lockdown aren’t hard to miss: The engine of the story is a virus manufactured by Big Pharma that’s set loose by a lab leak. Mr. Rosman has been reading the broadsheets.There are a number of movies by which “New Life” can be measured. “Panic in the Streets” (1950), for one; “Night of the Living Dead” (1968), another. Other examples abound, both stellar (“The Andromeda Strain”) and star-studded (“Contagion”). Although Mr. Rosman’s film is pre-apocalyptic in its scenario, it nonetheless has the quality of last man on earth entertainments like, yes, “The Last Man on Earth” (1964) and the underrated “I Think We’re Alone Now” (2018), in which Peter Dinklage attempts to find meaning in a world without companions.Sonya Walger in ‘New Life.’ Via Brainstorm MediaA difference here is that our two protagonists are women. Jessica Murdock (television actress Hayley Erin making her movie debut) is a 20-something loner hightailing it through the leafy backwoods of America. She’s got a black eye, not much to her name, and hasn’t bathed for days. We learn the latter when a kindly older couple (Blaine Palmer and Betty Moyer) bring Jess into their cabin for a home-cooked meal. They gently encourage her to take advantage of the shower after she finishes wolfing down breakfast.All the while, the audience is shown flashbacks to times that are happier (Jess hiking in the woods with a hunky boyfriend) and nightmarish (Jess imprisoned in a dark, dank cell). We eventually learn that our heroine is an asymptomatic carrier of a virus, the indications of which are nasty and the end results better left unmentioned. Jess is unaware of the contagion. She’s on the run because she accidentally killed the guard at the holding facility while escaping. On the hunt for Jess is a dogged governmental operative, Elsa Gray (Sonya Walger of “Lost”).Elsa has her own health problems: She’s been diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disorder, ALS, or, for those with a memory, Lou Gehrig’s disease. Although her symptoms aren’t enough to waylay Elsa in her current duties, the loss of muscle control is proving problematic. She hasn’t told her bosses about the illness and is trying to hide its ever-increasing symptoms. At one point in her travels, Elsa sits down to have an online conversation with a friend about the illness, and is introduced to a woman with advanced ALS. This is, I believe, the screen debut of Lisa Cross, a real-life ALS advocate whose prescriptions for our fictional agent are daunting but not defeatist.As you might imagine, this aspect of Mr. Rosman’s film provides grounding for its more predictable turns and fanciful tangents. As it is, “New Life” thrives on the intensity of its two leads, the swiftly delineated characterizations of a game supporting cast, America’s natural landscape and the rustic byways that pepper it. Although there are better plague movies to be had — should you be inclined to such a thing — Mr. Rosman’s film is hard to deny when it’s up-and-running.

Enthusiasm Is Main Draw of Director John Rosman’s First Full-Length Feature, ‘New Life’

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