From Omeleto.
An arrogant lawyer has a terrifying drive home.
ROAD KILL is used with permission from Steve Ramsden. Learn more at https://steveramsden.com.
Richard is at home at night, having just made it through a terrifying incident on his drive home. As he was driving after a long, draining day on the dark roads, he accidentally hit a vagrant.
When Richard gets out of his car to investigate, he discovers the man he hit is dead. With no one witnessing the accident on the desolate route, Richard gets rid of the body, figuring no one will miss a homeless man. Unwilling to risk his reputation, career and wealth, Richard thinks he’s covered his tracks, but soon discovers that there’s more to the accident than he thinks.
Directed and written by Steve Ramsden, this short thriller-drama is filled with violence, crime and the darker impulses of human behavior, but at heart it’s a character portrait of a man of great arrogance, easily meting out judgment of who matters and who doesn’t and carrying a sense of entitlement. His temperament and values make him successful in his job as a prosecutor, but they also inculcate a lack of empathy in him — a void that eventually comes back to haunt him.
As Richard relays his drive home to his partner, he seems shaken by the incident, which he relays in halting detail. The writing is rich with detail, both of the event and the character. At first, Richard seems unnerved and regretful as he describes his overworked condition, the dark unlit roads and the constant press of his job. But as Richard unfurls the whole story, we soon see the depths of his character. More importantly, we hear his justifications for his increasingly callous actions.
The writing works on different levels, guided not just by the need to know what happens next, but also by the full reveal of Richard’s character. This arc is carried by a controlled and mesmerizing performance by lead actor Guy Henry, who slowly reveals the moral bankruptcy of Richard. Telling himself that a vagrant is not worth endangering his freedom and position, Richard seeks to cover up the consequences of his action. As he justifies this to his increasingly horrified partner, we see Richard’s deep narcissism and lack of conscience.
Taut and compelling, ROAD KILL in many ways resembles a horror movie, and certainly, its dark visuals, build-up of tension and suspenseful ending can skew the film towards that genre. But the true horror here is how easily it is for one man to dehumanize and disregard human life. The film ends on something of a cliffhanger — although it’s not hard to surmise what happens — but in the end, we can’t help but frame it as some kind of skewed justice, as callow and equally dark as that seems.
