Big Sky is about an agoraphobic teenage girl whose shuttle gets carjacked on the way to therapy and must get help in the middle of nowhere. She must also evade the bad guys. I adored the trailer for this movie because it reminded me of Copy Cat when an agoraphobic’s fear was outweighed by her desire to survive. Unlike Copy Cat, the movie does not get more interesting as it unfolds. After one hour, I thought, “What are we doing here,” and the movie had thirty more minutes to go.
Intellectually I understand that when you make a movie, you have a script that at some point everyone agrees is great and takes great pains to execute, but as the filming begins, doesn’t it become obvious that some storylines are more interesting, and the rest is just crap? Isn’t it possible to do immediate rewrites to refocus the film and make something better or is the effort too Herculean that it just makes more sense to make the weaker film? Or is it just not obvious to people within production? Big Sky was definitely leaning towards examining how people deal with life through chemistry with or without mental issues, but at some point, the number of overtly pathological dysfunctional mentally disabled people became unrealistic considering the expanse of the landscape. I also think that the movie was trying to explore the relationship dynamic between the healthier person and the sicker person and how that connection makes the healthier person vulnerable physically and mentally. Both ideas sound good on paper, but feel like someone read Of Mice and Men and missed what made it poignant and resonate with audiences.
Big Sky’s main asset was Kyra Sedgwick as the mother of the agoraphobic teen. When her character is not on screen, the rest of the movie is flat and tedious. She is a woman who has not been able to rise above any challenges, but is treading water, has not emotionally shut down and is determined to live some kind of vibrant life only to be smacked down at every imaginable turn yet is undefeated and has a Barbara Stanwyck kind of attitude. When she starts to break down and see things, it is interesting and becomes a metaphor for what is happening to her. While her relationship with her daughter is strained, she still instinctually loves her, and her actions are plausible. She is the only reason that anyone should watch this movie.
Instead Big Sky seems to be more successful in creating a mystery surrounding who the shuttle jackers are and what they want, which seemed fairly obvious at an early point. I love Frank Grillo, but even he can’t make it work. There is a Purge aesthetic to this portion of the film, which does not elevate the material. I just didn’t care about them yet at least a third of the film is devoted to them, which was a big mistake. The minute that the shuttle picked up other patients, I knew that I could not suspend disbelief. If you had someone with that severe a condition, and there was a monetary incentive to get her to your treatment facility, she would get her own shuttle, and the driver would be gunning it as quickly as legally permissible to get there as soon as possible. The movie creates sensational scenarios instead of earning them.
Big Sky was a big disappointment and is not worth your time unless you are a big Sedgwick or Grillo fan. I would suggest that you skip it even if you do love them. This film will annoy you until you don’t care about what is happening to any of the characters.