Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

When Darlene (Ingrid Kavelaars, DREAMCATHER) and her daughter Victoria (Hannah Lochner, DAWN OF THE DEAD) find themselves on the run from an abusive relationship, a case worker puts them in touch with a safe house where there are no questions asked and guests are welcome to stay as long as needed. It’s quite a drive, but that’s ok, Darlene says, the further the better.

They find themselves on a remote farm owned by Bea (Kathleen Quinlin, BREAKDOWN), a woman who doesn’t need to know their names, doesn’t need to know their story, who just wants them to feel safe and help them get back on their feet. She only has a few rules. Guests are confined to the farm, as much for their safety and for Bea’s, as there are folks in town curious about her business and it’s none of their concern. Guests are also not allowed any controlled substances, not even cigarettes. And they’re expected to help out with the day to days of running Bea’s goat farm. Then Bea asks for Darlene’s keys, which she’ll keep locked up for Darlene because there are always new guests coming and going and she wouldn’t want anyone to walk off with her car keys.

Darlene doesn’t see a problem with this and all is fine for a day until Bea adds a fourth rule: tell your daughter the barn is off limits. Bea cites wood rot and termites as her reason, but by now Darlene’s wondering if new rules are going to be added every day. Everything is calming down for Darlene and Victoria, life is looking like a pretty good gig again, until one day a man shows up at the farm. One of Bea’s rules is no men on the farm. This guy’s not happy to be here, but he’s looking for Mattie, his girlfriend who had been staying on the farm, but who said she was going back to him. She never showed up. I wonder what it is Bea keeps in that barn.

Darlene finds out when she sneaks in there while Bea is busy painting with Victoria upstairs. Mattie isn’t looking too good, chained to the wall and covered in blood. But she’s alive. Before Darlene and get her daughter and leave, however, the police show up. Bea tells them to hide in the closet and don’t make a sound, which they do, even though you’d think WTH??, but considering Darlene’s on the run herself, she really doesn’t want to have to deal with the police right now. The cop is there on a routine visit as it seems women from Bea’s farm tend to come up missing pretty regularly, but Bea is sworn to confidentiality and refuses to confirm or deny any of the missing women have ever been there. Included in the cop’s pack of missing women photos are Darlene and Victoria.

The cop leaves and everyone breathes a sigh of relief until Bea discovers Darlene has cigarettes and booze in her suitcase. She knows the rules. Her punishment is to be locked in her room until tomorrow. It’s at this point some truth begins to come through; when Victoria comes to Darlene’s locked door, she thinks nothing of the fact her mother is locked in. In fact, her only question is “What did you do now?” And Darlene’s reply is to tell her daughter just do whatever Bea tells you.

The next morning, after Bea lets Darlene out, Bea heads to the studio with Victoria for some more painting and Darlene, after checking on Mattie in the barn, takes off running for town. She doesn’t get far before Bea runs her down, tosses her in the trunk, and she winds up in Mattie’s spot--Mattie has by now been disposed of.

Bea tells Victoria her mother abandoned her, and at first she believes it, until she spots the blood on the bumper of their car. And while Victoria isn’t about to let Bea hurt her mother, she also has no sympathy for the woman whom she sees as weak and, basically, always “asking for it.” Even their current predicament, Victoria believes, is because her mother is unable to protect either of them and Victoria had to take charge.

While pretty much every shot of HARM’S WAY is predictable from the moment the movie begins, there were several things I found very effective about it, especially concerning the characterizations of Darlene and Victoria. Writer William Bell (this is his only screenwriting credit) has played with the format just enough to get us to believe a set of things about Darlene and the extent she’s willing to go to protect her daughter and be a good parent, and the few small but very significant revelations in the end tell us we really knew nothing all along. Well played.

My problem with the movie was that, up until those moments, the plot fell into its pre-determined slots at the pre-determined times. We don’t believe for a second that Darlene and her daughter are safe when they get to Bea’s farm. Why would we when we’ve seen this movie in various incarnations a dozen times--at least--already? In fact, we wonder why Darlene doesn’t just leave sooner, since she obviously wasn’t comfortable with things as soon as Bea laid down the rules of the farm. As soon as Bea said you’re not allowed to leave the property and I’ll be taking your keys, I’da been gone.

Darlene’s few feeble attempts, and then failure, at stepping up and protecting her daughter seem like plot holes at first, but in the end make some kind of sense and add to her characterization and attempted growth. It doesn’t work out like she’d hoped, but she gave it a shot, and these are the areas where Bell’s script work the best--which is surprising because, in those moments, they seem like the weakest parts.

He also plays well with Victoria and how abuse can affect the child stuck in that situation. She sleeps with a knife under her mattress, and another under her pillow. They make her feel safe, she tells Bea. But in the end, this might not be the whole truth. Victoria is a quiet girl, and we feel that most of what she thinks and feels goes unexpressed, and Bell plays this up well in developing her character, and in his third act revelations.

Melanie Orr’s direction was nothing special. The movie was watchable, without being flashy or boring, just . . . there. She’s certainly not setting any newer higher standards, but I’ve seen much worse. There’s simply little to be said for it in this case.

HARM’S WAY isn’t my normal weekend thing, but a guy at work loaned it to me so I figured I’d give it a shot. It wasn’t bad. I mean, it wasn’t spectacular, but it was pretty good, considering it came and went with almost no ounce of originality until those final few moments in the barn. That certainly wasn’t the way I’d expected it to end, but everything else up to that point was pretty well by the numbers. Quinlin, Kavelaars and Lochner play their parts well but there were no standouts and in a couple of weeks I probably won’t remember but a few things about this movie, mainly that I saw it and that I liked the ending. In this case, that’s good enough.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older