3 DAY WEEKEND: an ingeniously constructed thrill ride

Maja Stojan in 3 DAY WEEKEND. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

The inventively constructed thriller 3 Day Weekend is a storytelling triumph for writer-director Wyatt McDill and a taut 80 minutes of gripping entertainment.

3 Day Weekend begins with a lovelorn Millennial doofus, Ben, on a solo camping trip. Despite a noticeable lack of outdoor skills, Ben pitches his tent in the woods near a remote lake; but other people arrive, and everything that Ben witnesses tells him that he has blundered into a kidnapping in progress, and, possibly, a murder. But all is not as it seems…

We follow what Ben sees for 29 minutes, and then the point of view shifts to that of a second character. The added vantage point provides the audience with more puzzle pieces, and we start understanding that the story is going in another direction. Then a third character, and, finally a fourth, add layers to complete the story.

McDill even takes us from one crime subgenre to another – is this a peril-and-rescue film, a heist movie, a tragic neo-noir or a perfect crime flick?

And McDill tells his story with hardly any dialogue – and essentially none in the first half of the movie, unless you count grunts. The actors – Maya Stojan, Morgan Krantz, Nathan Phillips and Scott MacDonald – ably tell the story without many lines.

This isn’t exactly like Rashomon, where each character’s perspective shapes the facts differently. In 3 Day Weekend, the facts are all the same; it’s just that some characters come to the story knowing things that others don’t, and some characters experience events that others miss.

There’s plenty of humor slyly embedded in this tale, chiefly in the foibles of the male characters. Plus there are two tattoos that the audience will not be expecting.

McDill also cleverly uses the time-stamped notifications and texts from smart phones to set and reset the timeline of the story threads.

This is an ingenuously-constructed story. Cinequest hosts the world premiere of 3 Day Weekend.

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