Without

On a remote wooded island outside Washington, recent college graduate Joslyn accepts a job caring for an elderly man while his family are on acation. With her patient wheelchair-bound and catatonic, Joslyn finds herself alone, cut off from the world without internet access or phone eception. Over the course of her stay, the realities of a recent personal tragedy begin to surface, and Joslyn finds herself consumed with grief and filled with a creeping feeling of fear and paranoia.

Debut director Mark Jackson’s claustrophobic portrait of a confused young woman s a remarkable achievement, evoking genuine emotion beneath its hauntingly minimalist surface. While by no means a thriller, Without does flirt with genre traditions to great effect, creating a quietly visceral tone that teases the viewer with a constant sense of underlying menace. As Joslyn’s sexual preoccupations become ever more apparent, Without may bring to mind Polanski’s Repulsion, but Jackson’s assured style, complemented by a remarkable performance from newcomer Joslyn Jensen, makes this something entirely original and distinctive in itself.