When a snowstorm shuts down the road, a group of strangers find themselves shut-in at a highway rest stop.  Cabin fever quickly sets in as tensions flare, complicated even more when a young girl, Jay (Mila Harris) is discovered, bound, in the back of one of the vans in the parking lot.  With no one coming forward to claim the girl, everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide. 

No Exit is a claustrophobic thriller directed by Damian Power for Twentieth Century Studios and released on Hulu.  Based on Taylor Adams’ novel, Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari pen the script, and they deliver a taught, trapped in one place thriller with plenty of twists and turns.  The duo have a clear understanding of how the genre works, and coupled with Power’s direction, No Exit carefully doles out information to the audience that keeps us involved and intrigued with plenty of downbeats that have details hidden in the dialogue.   

Leading the ensemble is Darby (Havana Rose Liu), a young woman who escapes from her sobriety center after receiving word that her mother has fallen ill.  The nice thing about how the script treats Darby is that, while we know she is our central character and will be protected due to her necessity of the plot, Barrer and Ferrari put her through the ringer and do not make her job easy.  Liu, in turn, is able to give Darby a wide range and it makes it easy to root for her because we want to – we feel like we know her – and it is not just because she is the lead of the script.  Darby gains our sympathy easily enough and her redemptive arc is very exciting to watch as she begins getting closer and closer to the center of the mystery. 

After Darby, we meet Ed (Dennis Haysbert) and Sandi (Dale Dickey), an elderly couple trying to make the best of their stranded situation.  Dickey is, as she always is, a magnetic personality on screen.  She gets the ball rolling on our introductions to the characters and works as a great entry point to this stage of the film.  Her husband, Ed, is an equally warm personality and alliances are already beginning to form as the older couple is immediately trustworthy.    

Soon after, Lars (David Rysdahl) and Ash (Danny Ramirez) enter the scene.  Lars is an instantly un-trustable presence that makes everyone feel a little uneasy.  Ash, on the other hand, is much cooler and calmer.  It is a well-formed ensemble, with everyone knowing their role in this closed off ecosystem and filling their roles quite well.  The chemistry between characters forms almost immediately and in a very natural way which means that once the discovery is made that there is a kidnapped child in the van outside, the real excitement of No Exit can begin.  

The script goes to some wild places as the mystery constantly deepens, but it all works well within the world of the film.  The script never cheats at the game, and like any good thriller everything that is setup will come back into play.  At only 95 minutes, No Exit does not have much time to waste and the pot boils over quickly with time to spare.  What takes place in the final act is a surprisingly bloody and brutal, no holds barred, confrontation between the travelers that is, equally shocking and quite enjoyable to watch despite the sudden genre shift.  It is a simple story – a diet version of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (2015) – but it wastes no time setting the premise, discovering the mystery, and letting the characters suspicions fester.  Despite the mania, Powers keeps the film well under his control creating a suspense-driven narrative that ends with a powder keg bang in an incredibly satisfying way.