Indy Film Fest: L’Incidente (The Accident)

Award-winning yet disappointing entry into the 2024 Indy Film Fest.

For Indy Film Fest schedule and tickets, please click here.

When I was researching the background on this movie, I was astounded to see that it had recently won a Grand Jury Prize at the Slamdance Film Festival earlier this year.  Maybe I missed something, but this entry into the 2024 Indy Film Fest is one that I recommend you skip. 

L’Incidente is an Italian movie with English subtitles, and starts off interestingly enough.  The tension builds as we ride along with Marcella (Guilia Mazzarino) who is rushing to get her daughter from school.  The point-of-view is as if you are sitting in the passenger seat with Marcella as she frantically heads to the school, skipping work early to do so.  As the title of the movie would indicate, she gets into a car accident en route to this pickup.  Cool premise thus far, right?

The problem is, except for the final shot of the movie, we don’t change points-of-view!  The movie is filmed from the passenger seat the entire time, and this provoked feelings of boredom and monotony as the viewer.  Now, I saw the movie Locke (2013) where we rode along with Tom Hardy in his car the whole time, but there was so much happening in terms of plot and character development to keep me entertained. 

I’m no stranger to claustrophobic movies like this either.  Remember Buried (2010) that basically takes place in a coffin, Devil (2010) that takes place in an elevator car, or 127 Hours (2010) where James Franco is pinned in between a rock the whole time (I suppose 2010 was a good time for this genre of movie)?  All of them were likable despite the lack of scenery changes.

L'Incidente, however, doesn’t have much happening in terms of elements to keep the viewer hooked.  The musical score works, but isn’t enough to keep me from feeling trapped next to Marcella.  Maybe that’s the point of the movie?

Marcella, now out of car and a job, decides to buy a tow truck on a whim.  Why a tow truck?  The movie never really says.  Anyway, she is now in the “underworld” of tow truck drivers, and has to find a way to pay back the loan for the 1983 Iveco Daily truck that she purchased.  What an absolute snooze-fest.  There is a nice little twist with about 20-minutes left in the movie that makes things a little bit more interesting, but it comes a little bit too late to save this movie from an abysmal rating. 

If you happen to watch this and disagree with my take, I would love to hear what I may have missed.  Runtime of this movie is 1hour and 12 minutes. 

1/5 Stars