We Had It Coming (2019)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on August 30, 2021 @ tonymacklin.net.

The easily forgettable title of We Had It Coming suggests fatalism.

The low-budget indie is literally and symbolically dark. Much of it is shot at night. Its vision is consistently bleak. The movie is effective at sustaining a feeling of dread throughout.

But the film also is disjointed, and at times slapdash.

Although written and directed by a male - Canadien Paul Barbeau -, We Had It Coming renders an unrelenting vision of the male gender as abusive, violent, inarticulate, and beastial. Women are victims; they struggle against seemingly unbeatable forces.

It is valid but drastic. The one-dimensional point of view doesn't allow for much humanity.

We Had It Coming, set in Canada, is the story about Anna (Natalie Krill), who sets out with her friend/lover Olivia (Alexia Fast) to avenge the death of Anna's sister. Her sister committed suicide after being abused by her pimp.

Throughout their journey we see women being assaulted and dehumanized.

Director Barbeau - who was line producer on Arrival (2016) - has a nice visual sense. He composes images using nature that create alienation and desolation. He uses objects - such as doors, mailboxes, and phones - that are symbolic. Behind doors, which open and shut, anguish and violence occurs.

Barbeau also employs dualities: two women again and again, two amusement park rides, two languages, two females stretched out in similar postures on bed, two smoking cigarettes, two phone calls to Mom, two sitting on an isolated bleacher, two sides of a road split by a yellow line, two doors at a gas station, two, two, two.

But despite the film's assets, its liabilities overcome them.

Where Barbeau comes up short is his script, especially his dialogue. As in so many indie films, the favorite word is "fuck." Writers don't seem to know that David Mamet intentionally killed the word. It has no potency anymore. To use it ad infinitum is to write banally.

Natalie Krill and Alexia Fast are capable actresses, but they don't create memorable characters in We Had It Coming. The writing has a lot to do with that.

Perhaps the best scene in We Had It Coming is near the end when one of the women in her car is driving down the road, and suddenly she is accosted by a huge truck behind her. Men are monsters on wheels. It's a jarring, shocking scene.

When Thelma and Louise were faced with an offensive trucker, they acted against him.

I knew Thelma and Louise.

Anna and Olivia, you aren't Thelma and Louise.