Twenty years after the disappearance of her daughter, recovering alcoholic Darlene Hagen (Anna Gunn) is preparing to host her family’s Christmas celebration with her best friend Gretchen (Janeane Garofalo). Late Christmas Eve, Darlene’s estranged ex-brother-in-law, Jack (Linus Roache) arrives unannounced, bearing nostalgic gifts and a heavy secret. Soon, Darlene finds herself caught between reason and ruthless instinct. Trapped together by a dangerous storm, a battle of wits escalates to a violent game of revenge.
There’s something about The Apology that reminds me of an early 2000s thriller, which I love. Sadly, this film isn’t too enjoyable and it oftentimes ends up being a headache-inducing film thanks to the odd direction by Alison Locke. She also wrote the film which is a bit of a shame seeing as how the story is incredibly predictable, even if it’s nowhere near insufferable. It’s the definition of a missed opportunity.
It’s one of those films that thinks it’s ridiculously smart when in all reality, it’s the opposite. You can see every twist and turn coming from a mile away. But sometimes even a predictable film can be good if it has a bunch of entertaining scenes that capture your attention. There are a couple of moments like that in The Apology which I appreciated, but sadly, these were too few and far between for me to say that I actually enjoyed watching it.
The script also focuses way too much on the desire for vengeance theme here, which can be a bit of fun, but the only issue is that it doesn’t leave any room for emotional investment in any of the characters. Whenever certain people get involved in hairy situations, you don’t really feel too much because you don’t necessarily feel as if you have a connection with that person. There needed to be a handful of scenes where we were able to breathe for a while with the characters. What are their other emotions? What else are they going through? The Apology leaves things fairly vague.
All of the performances across the board are great, however, namely, Anna Gunn, who has sadly flown under the radar after her tenure on the wildly popular drama series Breaking Bad. Here, she plays a much different character than what you’re probably used to seeing her portray. Linus Roache also does a terrific job, as does Janeane Garofalo. The cast clearly understood the assignment, which is always good to see.
It’s just too bad that writer/director Alison Locke didn’t understand the assignment quite as well as she did. This isn’t a terrible movie by any means, but it’s certainly not one that I would call “good,” either.
The Apology is an incredibly predictable thriller that focuses way too much on its themes of vengeance rather than exploring its complex characters.