The chain-of-disaster form of Reroute (Viva Films, 2022) is, by now, a genre all its own — call it Rube Goldberg noir. Filmmaker Lawrence Fajardo infuses the genre with his dazzling gift for ambiguous poetic menace. The surprises in Reroute aren’t simply the plot twists, they’re the haunting flashes of dread, memory, and desire. Fajardo, working in the dense channel-surfing style of Amok (2011) and A Hard Day (2021), makes every shot a sliver of ominous perception. This is also the most radical departure Fajardo has ever made in terms of basic sensibilities. Using the already pitch-dark modern noir style as a starting point, Fajardo pushes his story into realms of surreal excess. The first two thirds of Reroute is a seductive head bender. But around the time it turns from day to night, the film begins to lose its tricky aura of borderline surreal mystery. It becomes a rigged, what-will-happen-next suspense game, and you begin to sense just how arbitrary the twists are. Reroute lives almost as dangerously as its characters, and gets away with it. Exceedingly raw, imaginative, and daring, this genre exercise is loaded with brazen amorality, subversive intent and surreal asides. Fajardo assembled a formidable cast that serves him well. John Arcilla rips out the inner torment that lives inside Gemo and dares us to not close our eyes. Cindy Miranda taps her inner resources deeper than ever before to play Trina. Sid Lucero is compelling as Dan, a man gradually falling apart through the course of the day and Nathalie Hart delivers a harrowing, convincing performance as Lala. The film borrows heavily from the noir genre, with intermittent dramatic lighting techniques and Arcilla’s face, so often shot in close up, conveys multitudes with just the curl of a lip or the raise of an eyebrow. This strong a cast is dominated by the atmospheric use of Joshua A. Reyles’s impressive photography. Fajardo was right to want to apply his gifts to a throwaway thriller.
Reroute features a gorgeous black-and-white high definition presentation. Vivamax's release, sourced from an HD video shoot, reveals incredible detail throughout. Image clarity is striking and the image's accuracy helps accentuate the finest facial and clothing textures, not to mention an abundance of beautiful, everyday elements throughout the film. Every scene springs to life with a beautiful natural accuracy that feels almost accentuated in black-and-white, allowing the viewer to focus more on objects rather than detail and color simultaneously. The black-and-white photography looks wonderful, with deep blacks and natural shades of gray gracing the screen. The image suffers from no perceptible banding, excess noise, or blockiness. This is a fine, reference-quality transfer that will dazzle, even in the absence of color. The soundtrack offers a limited-range listen, but one that's nevertheless well-defined within those parameters. There's only simple sound effects lightly swooshing across the front with little more than a basic structural realism. A few other ambient effects play with a decent lifelike presence, at least as much as a track minus surround channels can create. Musical delivery is smooth and accurate, playing with neither shallowness nor aggressiveness, finding instead a firm, pleasing middle ground. Dialogue dominates the picture and plays with effective front-center presence and volume. The track delivers all that's required with ease. The stirring, impressive final stretch ensures that the whole thing finishes on an exceedingly compelling note, which ultimately confirms Reroute's place as a perpetually watchable thriller.