Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lou’ on Netflix, in Which Allison Janney Gets Grim and Grizzled for a Survivalist Suspense-Thriller

Now on Netflix, Lou sees Allison Janney get her The Old Man on. She plays a dog owner and former CIA agent who finds herself in a circumstance that ends her quiet life of seclusion and compels her to once again kick some ass – and you just want her to find Jeff Bridges on whatever dating app retired government spies with considerable hand-to-hand skills and checkered pasts use so they can meet and hang out at the dog park, and maybe have a nice chat over pie and coffee afterward. Seems like it would be psychologically productive. The movie boasts J.J. Abrams as a producer, and is directed by Anna Foerster, a longtime collaborator with Roland Emmerich, who thankfully with her second directorial effort (the first: Underworld: Blood Wars) shows little influence from the disaster-movie master in crafting a fairly small-scale action-suspense story. And you know what? It ain’t half bad.

LOU: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Lou (Janney) looks like she’s really seen some shit. Probably done some shit, too. She’s mostly expressionless as she hunts a deer, puts a bullet in a deer, butchers a deer, burns some classified documents in the fireplace, finishes a glass of whiskey and props her rifle under her chin. Thunder booms and lightning crackles. But she doesn’t pull the trigger – no, this is one of those framing devices you see in movies. You know, the kind that want to really hook ya. We jump back a day or two. She lives on one of the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington state. Reagan’s president. The cars are boxy. There’s something about the Iran-Contra scandal on the TV, which is boxy, too. We hear Bon Jovi on the soundtrack. I’d wager it’s about 1987.

Lou drives her rickety truck alongside Hannah (Jurnee Smollett) and reminds her brusquely that the rent’s due. Hannah and her daughter Vee (Ridley Asha Bateman) live in a mobile home on Lou’s property. Lou hovers for a second. Is she gonna say something? She looks like she’s gonna say something. But she’s got years of practice of not saying something, so she doesn’t say something.That night, the storm rages. Hannah nestles Vee into bed while across the way Lou scratches out her suicide note. The power goes out and while Hannah bears the elements outside to check the electrical box, someone snatches Vee and R-U-N-N-O-F-Ts. Hannah’s car is dead. She interrupts Lou’s final moments to find out that Lou’s power is also out and Lou’s phone is dead and then Lou’s truck explodes. Someone planned this: Hannah’s ex/Vee’s dad, a former Green Beret, war criminal and explosives expert. He’s supposed to be dead. But he ain’t dead.

Alrighty then. They’ll have to track him through the woods, Lou says. Lou helps Hannah gear up – flashlights, extra batteries, deer rifle, etc. Lou hands Hannah a knife and says if some man attacks her, “go for the eyes.” Damn. What’s Lou capable of? A lot, of course. A lot. They trek through the ferns and pouring rain and there’s a couple dangerous adversaries and a precarious rope bridge and a lot of mud and rock and a twist or two in the narrative path and some bad decisions made by the characters (but actually the screenwriters) and are we biting our nails yet? Yeah, a little bit.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Lou blends the Pacific Northwest setting of the terribly underrated drama Leave No Trace with a splash of Jeremy Saulnier-style cringe-inducing violence (see Blue Ruin or Green Room) and the Clint Eastwood movie in which he plays the aging cop who has a heart attack, Blood Work.

Performance Worth Watching: Is Janney the Performance Worth Watching in every movie she’s in? Pretty much. She consistently brings extra oomph to characters like Lou, who benefits from the extra dimension Janney brings to cliche-ridden characters.

Memorable Dialogue: Lou starts doing some hardcore survivalist shit:

Hannah: How do you know all this stuff?

Lou: Girl Scouts.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: These two women are tough as nails and they’re going to make that man pay. He’s a killer and an abuser and a psycho and he’s endangering his own child on purpose. There’s more to his motivation, but that’s a muddled junkheap of explainy-plot in a third act that somewhat diminishes the impact of the taut suspense built up during the first two, when Hannah and Lou are really put through the ringer: stumbles and tumbles and wounds and inclement weather and a rather tense scuffle with antagonists, all rendering them very wet and weary and limping and reliant on adrenaline and Hannah’s Mom Powers, which range from resilience to extra-resilient resilience.

Foerster keenly establishes the beautiful-but-dangerous setting and leans heavily into the grim atmosphere so everything tonally jibes by the time the story gets markedly dark near the end, and I hope I’m not saying too much by describing it as tangentially oedipal. That stuff isn’t wholly convincing; it’s overwrought, and could use another run through the writers’ room. So I suggest you lean into the craft of the film, which is fast-paced and edited extra-crispy so you feel the tension of the situation and the fortitude of the characters’ predicament, which gets brutal at times: Women Can Be Violent Too, you know. Of course you know. That assertion has been made by a variety of feminist film narratives, which Lou mimics with some righteousness, but never quite refreshes or reinvigorates. And that’s OK – there’s a visceral immediacy to Hannah and Lou’s survivalism that keeps us in the moment. But investing in the characters’ emotional journeys is a less rewarding endeavor.

 

Our Call: STREAM IT. Lou is a worthy suspense-thriller bolstered by strong performances and direction. And you could do far worse than watching Janney dig in and get dirty for 100 minutes.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.