168 - The Traveler

    On Christmas Eve, a small crew of six at the police station are confronted by a man who walks in wanting to confess.  He acts very mysteriously.  It's gradually revealed that all of the crew working at the station that evening were involved in the beating/torture of a man who was left in a coma.  Now the police officers are being picked off.
    I'm dreading writing this up.  It's not a horrible movie.  It had a lot of potential to be really good.  It reminded me a lot of Identity.  But the acting isn't quite up to snuff.  Of course, the acting isn't terrible, just not as interesting.  What hurts the movie is the ending of it.
    We get a message that the stranger who comes in is obviously connected to the drifter that the cops beat.  The exact nature of that connection remains to be revealed.  However, the reveal - that the drifter actually did commit the crime they accused him of - isn't expected.  It doesn't add more depth to the movie, and it actually hurts our perception of it.  It turns from a justified revenge movie to being an unjustified revenge.
    From that point on, the movie gets even weirder.  Somehow, the power of this manifestation of the drifter is cancelled out if they call him by his name?
    I don't know what to say about the movie.  I admire that they were a bit willing to try a direction they normally wouldn't, but… I suppose that the message is just that sometimes the path less taken is less taken because it sucks.