Row (2025) Raindance Film Festival Review
Row (2025) Raindance Film Festival Review
After a failed trans-Atlantic WR attempt, a woman washes ashore on a blood-stained rowing boat. With all her crew mates missing, presumed dead, she must try and piece together fractured memories of the ordeal to prove her innocence.
Director Matthew Losasso’s ROW looks and sounds terrific. There’s terrific cinematography capturing the open sea in all its magnificence during stormy weather and otherwise, the film’s score is deliciously ominous, and on top of that the film’s small cast all bring in the goods. Where the film fails is with its pacing, it’s far too long runtime and far too many scenes of chatting. ROW needed to be tight and by slackening off for another in a long run of dialogue scenes.
The stunning landscapes make up for an otherwise routine story of folks bickering, fatal accidents, characters falling into stormy waters. It’s no DEAD CALM nor DANGEROUS ANIMALS; it could easily have worked as an audio book rather than a protracted thriller that unfortunately fails to thrill. There are a couple of wee twists that had me scratching my head, especially when we find out why the water supply was sabotaged, as did the revelation that someone on the boat knows that someone else on the boat is a murderer and still let them become crew on their small, claustrophobic vessel anyway.
