The title of Matthew Losasso’s Row comes with a double meaning. On the one hand, it describes the activity in which Megan Taylor (Bella Dayne), Lexi Townsend (Sophie Skelton), Daniel King (Akshay Khanna) and Mike Regelio (Nick Skaugen) are engaged as they attempt to break a world record by crossing the Atlantic – from Newfoundland to the Irish coast – in 28 days using only the propulsive power of their oars. It is a perilous 2300-mile journey on open, often very rough water, and one in nine of those who attempt it die. With this quartet, though, the statistics will be rather worse – for after an opening shot of the stricken vessel with blood on deck, with Daniel and Mike bound to the side, and with a terrified Megan in the hold clutching a knife, the film’s events will be told in flashback by a delirious Megan, the sole survivor of the voyage, washed up off course on the remote island of Hoy in Orkney and slowly recovering her strength and memory.
Pronounced differently, a “row” is a noisy quarrel – and as these four must not only endure painful labour and the harsh elements, they are also sharing very close quarters, without privacy. It is a scenario that practically guarantees palpable tensions, as everyone on board comes with their own personal baggage. Megan must struggle with her conscience for leaving behind her dying mother (Joanna Roth) in taking on this one-time opportunity to prove herself. Lexi is convinced that her boyfriend Adam (Mark Streppan), who had to step out of the expedition just before launch after breaking his leg, is seeing someone else behind her back.
Daniel becomes ever more intolerably controlling and dictatorial in his desperation to succeed and so to impress his father (who has bankrolled this venture). Nobody really knows anything about who Adam’s last-minute replacement Mike is, or what he might be capable of. And someone is systematically sabotaging the vessel’s electronics, cutting the crew off from communications with the outside world, and reducing them to old-school steering by compass and foot. With their supplies also plundered and fast running out, trust breaks down and paranoia sets in, as the unraveling rowers begin to represent as much of a danger to themselves and each other as the unpredictable weather and waters.
With its often spectacular seaborne thrills unfolding on a relatively small boat, Row recalls Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water (1962), Phillip Noyce’s Dead Calm (1989) and Rob Grant’s Harpoon (2019), with just a little bit of Kon Ichikawa’s Alone Across the Pacific (1963) and Simon Rumley’s Crowhurst (2017) thrown in to bring some claustrophobic madness. At the same time, Losasso’s screenplay, co-written with Skaugen, keeps the viewer more grounded if similarly isolated in the guesthouse where Megan convalesces, while framing her returning memories as a fever dream of alarm, unreliability and entrapment. It is a twisty structure, where we know from the start where things have already ended, but are in for a very bumpy ride finding out exactly how and why. The result is a survivalist study where characters behave ever more excessively and awfully under pressure, where the smallest problems are easily amplified, escalated and intensified, and where bigger threats swell and crest like the massive waves that sometimes overwhelm the vessel.
From the start, the meek, often mute Megan is marked by guilt – and that is how she is framed in the end. The final shot of her, glimpsed once more on a tiny boat engulfed on all sides by water, delivers the film’s bleakly existential view of humanity. For here, no man – or woman – is an island, and we are all, ultimately and in extremis, prey to our own, as well as others’, baser instincts and impulses.
Row saw its world premiere at the 33rd Raindance Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. In cinemas on Friday, September 5th.
