Sam Was Here (2017)
Directed by Christophe Deroo
Viewed on Shudder
A few days ago I was trawling through Shudder, looking for movies to watch when I stumbled upon Sam Was Here, a uniquely premised horror movie whose summary promised a mix of Black Mirror, Rob Zombie, and David Lynch. That struck me as an incredibly strange mix of directors/shows that diverge strongly in terms of visual style, storytelling conventions, and even their typical mediums, which, even though I’m only a huge fan of one of those listed folk, made me instantly curious as to how this mixture would turn out. If that sounds interesting, join me as I venture further into Sam Was Here!
Sam Was Here begins by following, you guessed it, Sam, a traveling salesman whose route was recently changed to encompass everyone living on a stretch of highway in the Mojave desert. Sam enjoys that job about as much as you would expect, considering the long driving times and extended periods of isolation, but a new problem soon arises for him. A spot of car trouble sends Sam looking for help, but he soon finds that wherever he goes, no one seems to be around, his hotel, a rest stop, houses, all are either empty or, as Sam suspects, their residents may be purposely avoiding him. As Sam searches for anyone on his way back home, his only company is a mysterious radio station that features rants from callers and news about an L.A. based murderer. But that’s not all the weirdness that Sam encounters that day, as he does soon meet people but they are anything but friendly, trying to kill him for seemingly no reason.
I have to get this out there immediately, this is an odd movie. As you might have been able to tell from the summary, this isn’t a movie that’s super narratively intense, it leans far more heavily on its visuals and performances than on its story. That isn’t a huge problem from me though, as I enjoyed the non-narrative based elements of the film. I’ll get into the visuals in a moment but first I want to talk about the score, which is a really neat throwbacky synth score and I just loved it. That may say less about the score than it does about me though because I am a huge sucker for synth scores and I’ve very rarely heard one that I didn’t enjoy at least somewhat.
Visually, Sam Was Here was just wonderful, beautiful shots of the Mojave skyline are everywhere and they are helped bring home this sense of intense isolation that was the best thing that Sam Was Here had going for it, especially when these shots featured this mysterious glowing red light that would appear at odd intervals. Speaking of isolation though, Sam is an interesting character to see in this predicament, because his home life, estrangement from his wife and daughter for unexplained reasons, mirrors his new problem, perhaps a little too closely but I don’t mind that much. All in all, I like Sam as the protagonist, he’s an appropriately down on his luck loser whose ilk are a staple of movies like this. His performance is good and Sam is mostly believably weirded out by the odd situation he walks into, but some issues arise with his character’s believability later on in the film, specifically in regards to his capacity for injury and his fighting prowess.
What is Sam Was Here’s greatest strength, its sense of foreboding isolation built into its setting, becomes its biggest weakness in the second half of the film. Once Sam begins running into people, the carefully constructed atmosphere of tense isolation starts getting cracks in it as Sam runs through the MOJAVE DESERT and just keeps running into people at houses or scrap yards or auto repair shops. I’m sure there are some pockets of businesses like this in the Mojave, but I would have liked to have seen that a bit more established before we went there and completely undermined the premise of intense isolation in a rural area. That problem of not establishing things was kind of a running theme and it led to a lot of scene transitions that just drove me nuts. For example, there’s a scene where Sam drives up to a motel and starts having car trouble. He leaves to find someone but the motel is empty, right afterward we see him in a hotel room with no explanation as to how he got in the room. I assume that he already checked into the room earlier in the day, but why would he have done that if he was trying to drive home to Los Angeles? I admit this is a nitpick, but it’s a scene that takes me out of the movie because it reminds me of how dangerous and isolating not having any people around would be, but it is rarely treated that way.
I’m not going to get into details as to where the story ends up, that would be a bit too spoilery, but I will say that the resolution is a bit unsatisfying. I can’t say I’m surprised by that though, it’s a common issue with films that prioritize visual depth over narrative depth, especially with the director going on record to say that was his goal here. Usually, I prefer more plot-driven movies but there is something to switching things up every now and then, and I do prefer when movies give no explanation to creepy things instead of over-explaining or giving dumb or trite explanations just so there aren’t any loose ends. Sam Was Here is very good at not over-explaining but I could have used just a pinch more of cohesive narrative.
If reading about Sam Was Here feels a bit disjointed, then I have successfully translated how watching it felt! I (mostly) kid, although the story gets a bit out there at times it is usually easily understandable, with the real star of the film being the admittedly impressive visuals. Sam Was Here is kind of a mixed bag, I enjoy the visuals but the lack of a strong narrative kind of frustrated during my viewing. This is definitely a movie for people who enjoy atmospheric driven horror more than people who enjoy story driven horror, so if you love plot heavy horror fiction you can probably give this film a pass, but if you love atmospheric synth scored horror then give Sam Was Here a try, you might get more out of it than I did.
Heavy Spoiler Section!
So a lot of this movie can only be discussed by getting into the particulars of what happens, which means a whooooole lot of spoilers. I was really into the first act of the movie, but problems arise when, after searching around for people, Sam eventually runs into a police officer wearing a rubber mask. Sam flags down the officer only to be shot on sight. I assumed that was going to mean Sam dies or gets captured, but Sam manages to escape with a gaping chest wound, which kind of stretched my suspension of disbelief, especially when he got into several fights while in his wounded state and won them! So the question of, why are all these people either avoiding or attacking Sam eventually gets answered, and that is because everyone in this stretch of the Mojave has received a letter from the aforementioned crazy radio show stating that Sam is to be avoided or attacked. Eventually, Sam is able to talk to the person running the news station and doesn’t get solid answers as to how or why he has been targeted, he’s only told that the newscaster is convincing people that Sam is the murderer that everyone on the news has been talking about.
Now, this all happens in the second half of the film and these odd developments are kind of why I can’t give a more total recommendation of the movie. I don’t mind the idea of a possibly innocent person targeted by a bizarre group in the middle of nowhere for ill-defined reasons, but I was a bit let down that there was never any attempt at explaining why this group targeted this guy or what the story of the admittedly pretty creepy guy who runs the station is. Maybe I’m overthinking it but I just wanted a bit more meat to this story, something that was a stronger statement.
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