Survivor’s guilt is good fodder for a horror movie, being used well in fare as diverse as super-low-budget 1962 classic Carnival of Souls to 1981’s The Survivor to the Final Destination series of this century.  I think it is odd that a shared feeling among most people who survive a traumatic event believe they didn’t deserve to do so. 

When we first see Anita Skinner in 1984’s Sole Survivor, she is sitting upright in a row of commercial airline seats, a stunned expression on her face.  Mind you, those seats are inside a plane, but are out in a field amongst the debris of a crash where she is, you guessed it, the sole survivor. 

This event had been dreamed in advance by Caren Larkey, playing an actress who gets psychic premonitions.  Go figure, Larkey will eventually be cast in a commercial produced by Skinner, but is so startled by the other woman’s presence on set that she turns just a couple of hours of work into a two day debacle.  She walks off the set that second day and is fired but, really, anybody causing that extent of problems would have been recast in the first hour of the first day.

Similar to Carnival of Souls (of which I am a big fan), Skinner keeps encountering dead people.  The first time this happens is at the loading dock of the hospital from which she has just been discharged, where a little girl incongruously appears.  In a close-up, we see the girl is dripping wet.  While distracted by the girl, Skinner is nearly struck by a large truck that has been silently coasting backwards towards her.  Later, we learn a corpse had been missing from the morgue, though only for a half hour.  Of course, the body was that of a young drowning victim.

Also like that 1962 film, this is a slow burn, which is telegraphed by the footage that plays out under the opening credits.  We see deserted city streets in the middle of the night.  There’s close-ups on the faces of mannequins in closed shops.  The only sign of life will be a bus with a Skinner as its only passenger.  She is sitting there stoically with a gun on her lap and a fair amount of blood on her white turtleneck.  We will come back to this moment when we near the end of the movie.

Something that really sold me on this film is how Skinner reacts to everything like a normal human being would.  I even liked her assessment of her survivor’s guilt: “I feel like I’m waiting to be caught.”  She’s closer to the truth than she realizes.

Unfortunately, the dead will also take those close to her if they happen to get in the way.  One innocent bystander is a teenager next door, played by Robin Davidson.  I liked her character, who is not innocent in all meanings of the word, as she seems to be playing the field with the boys.  At one point, Skinner says to her, “I hope I never get hard up enough to go out with one of the guys you bring home”, to which Davidson replies, “They’re all grey in the dark.”

Skinner will eventually strike up a convincing romance with a doctor played by Kurt Johnson.  I liked the rapport between them. In general, the dialogue in this film is better than this type of fare requires, and a great deal of those best lines are between these two.  Consider his reaction to the coffee commercial she’ll be filming: “Nine of ten doctors prefer Roaster’s Blend” “I’ve never heard of it” “Oh, then you’re that tenth doctor.”

I enjoyed Sole Survivor, though it largely explores ideas I have seen in a few other movies.  It is a fairly intelligent film with a curiously melancholic touch to it.  It even has a few genuine surprises.  But perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the film is how it shows one horrifically decorated kitchen after another.  For those who were born after the 70’s, believe me, this is an accurate time capsule of just how ugly people decorated their homes back then.

Dir: Thom Eberhardt

Starring Anita Skinner, Kurt Johnson, Robin Davidson, Caren Larkey

Watched on Shudder