Neve InTosh as Beth
Shaun Dooley as Kiern
Dean Andrews as Clive
Linzey Cocker as Jodie
Summary:
It’s Christmas and a boy is riding his bike delivering papers. He hears an argument coming from a nearby house, so the boy peeks in to check out the scene. The man in the house sees the boy and chases after. The young boy hops over a fence and runs into a wooded area. Suddenly he’s attacked by an unseen attacker and blood splatters the tree.
Next we see a father and daughter traveling across the countryside in a car. The daughter is listening to some rather loud music that the father doesn’t appreciate. He tries to change to Christmas music and the daughter complains. They share some good nature ribbing before we see the car parked along side the road with obvious car trouble.
The father (Clive) is dropping his daughter (Jodie) off at her estranged mother’s (Beth) house. Jodie doesn’t want to spend Christmas with her mother since she walked out on them many years ago, but her father insist she stay…at least for a couple of days.
Jodie lingers outside the for awhile but eventually walks inside and discover her mother upstairs engaged with another man. Jodie storms out of the house enraged by her mother’s action. The two have a heated confrontation in front of the neighbors before Jodie storms off and inside a neighbor’s house across the street, leaving Beth standing in the street wearing only a robe.
Beth returns to her house to dress before attempting to collect her daughter from the neighbor. The neighbor refuses to let Beth in the house nor attempts to have Jodie confront her mother again. Eventually the neighbor slams the door in Beth’s face. Suddenly a SWAT unit appears from out of the blue and tackles Beth telling her to stay down. When Beth’s neighbor, who chased off the paperboy, appears wielding a butcher’s knife, the SWAT unit shoots him on the spot. Then they escort Beth back to her house and tells her to stay inside.
Beth and her lover (Kiern) are taken back by the suddenly of the SWAT unit and when Beth attempts to reach her daughter again, the unit stops her and forces her back in the house. Kiern turns on the television and the watch a news report involving a mysterious container and a triple homicide before the power is cut off.
Stuck in the house without any idea of what is unfolding outside, the couple is frightened when they hear a noise coming from the second floor. Kiern grabs a kitchen knife and the two head upstairs to investigates. Unfortunately they discover to late that it is Beth’s next door neighbor who had crawled through the attic space. Startled by his sudden appearance, Kiern unintentionally slices his throat open, killing him in the process. Beth and Kiern eventually crawl through the attic space and enter her neighbors house. The house is in disarray and his wife lies dead in the living room. Panicked by the gruesome scene, Beth again tries to leave the safety of a house to reach her daughter. Her lover tries to convince her to stay inside and in a heated tussle, Kiern confesses that he’s married with kids.
Once the two have collected themselves, Beth looks out a window and sees a wounded SWAT officer holding a radio. Kiern goes outside to retrieve the radio and discovers the SWAT officer is still alive. They drag him inside He tells them that attack is terrorists and emphasis that they need to barricade the house and wait until the danger passes.
Later that night, Beth tells Kiern her story and how she walked away from her daughter and husband to have a career. When Beth checks on the SWAT officer, the two discover that the terrorist story is a lie. The attack is coming from within. Apparently this SWAT unit did capture some terrorist but pumped them full of experimental drugs, turning them into something worse. The SWAT unit destroyed the creatures except one. This lone creature or savage is the one terrorizing the neighbor. Suddenly the savage is in the house and Kiern is supposedly killed in their attempt to escape. Beth crawls back through the attic and back to her house but another SWAT officer is in the house. He knocks her out and ties her up as bait for the savage. Kiern comes to Beth’s rescue but the second SWAT officer kills him in their attempt to flee.
Upon seeing her lover lying dead in the street, Beth flees into the woods to be hunted by not only the SWAT team by the savage as well. Avoiding both dangers, Beth makes her way back to the neighbor’s house where her daughter fled to at the beginning of the film. Not finding her daughter there, Beth returns to her own home where her daughter is now hiding. When she tries to get inside, she finds all the doors locked and her daughter refuses to let her in. Beth eventually breaks into the house and get to her daughter only to discover the savage is in the bathroom. Her daughter runs out of the house but the savage attacks Beth and we are led to believe that she is strangled.
The savage attacks Jodie and as she grapples with him, Beth appears behind him, killing him with a fire poker through the throat. And as Beth stands over the dead savage, she screams in frustration, triumph and relief, a third SWAT officer appears in the dark and fires a single shot. Beth collapses in her daughter’s arms as credits roll.
Pros
First and foremost, this movie is well acted. These actors brought their “A” game to this movie. The main family (Beth, Jodie and Clive) portray a typical broken family. The husband is protective of his daughter but wants to try to rebuild the family. The daughter is a typical teenager who has a good relationship with her father but is extremely upset with the mother that abandoned her. And the mother who walked out acts self-centered and self-absorb with her life. She wants to try to rebuild a relationship with her daughter but only on her terms. But when danger closes in around, she realizes that her daughter is the only thing that counts and her only objective is reaching her to make sure she is safe.
The pace of the movie is great. Although it starts slow, the suspense and action continues to build until finally exploding at the end with a great big bang. These type of movies are ones that make me want more and keep me on the edge of my seat.
I like the tough female protagonist…Ripley in Alien, Sarah Conner in Terminator, Laura Croft in Tomb Raider, and Beth in Salvage. These women are ones who rise to the occasion when forced into extreme situations. Situations that seems un-winnable but somehow they win anyway.
Cons
The plot. While this movie has an intriguing plot, I almost think the writers cheated. The reason I say cheated is because I think the originally plot was a terrorist attack but after that concept is thrown out, it’s also thrown away for something “better.” Therefore we get the cheesey story that it’s a terrorist attack and then not 20 minutes later we’re told no, it’s not terrorist it’s terrorist that we experimented on.
Overall
This is a fun movie to watch. There’s intense action and suspense which remind me of some of the classic horror movies.
