The American feature film D Railed was filmed in 2018. Director Dale Fabrigar, who worked on the TV series Charmed, specializes in short films and dramas. This time, the low-budget B-category film created by him is announced in several genres at once: detective, adventure thriller, disaster film, horror, mystical thriller. It is this unimaginable genre “mix” that is the key that opens the lock to the meaning of the kaleidoscope of events that take place on the screen for 80 minutes.
Preamble
A group of strangers, dressed in the style of the 1920s, gathers at the railway station. All of them bought expensive tickets for an entertaining trip on a train stylized for that era (luxury entourage, coal-fired). The format of the retro event is a dramatization of the “mysterious express” plot in the spirit of Agatha Christie’s detective stories.
The characters of the film are several people who decided to celebrate Halloween in this way:
Strange type Eugene, sales manager of cosmetics, has already been to similar shows 15 times and considers himself a master of calculating a criminal in 5 minutes, to match Hercule Poirot. Thomas was recommended this activity by his brother, who was here last year. The girl Abigail and her companion Antonia, having read exciting detective stories, are driven by the desire to get vivid impressions. Gloomy and rustic-looking Jesset wanted to visit high society. Pretty Evelyn, when meeting, gave a strange explanation: she went on a retro journey in memory of her friend.
Plot Narrative
Conventionally, the film D Railed can be divided into several parts that differ sharply in genre, are not connected with each other in any way and form sharp plot zigzags.
Detective. According to the advertising scenario, during a themed dinner in a dining car, the actors act out a murder, and the quest participants must find the criminal within the allotted time. The host of the event falls dead with a knife stuck in his back. The company is going to put forward assumptions about who committed the bloody crime and why. However, Eugene discovers that this is not theatrical at all: the actor is really dead. Action. Unexpectedly, Jesseth points a pistol at the passengers – this is a bandit raid for the purpose of robbery. While his accomplice from among the staff collects jewelry from the guests, he heads to the train drivers. A fight breaks out (similar to those that characters in films with Steven Seagal arrange). The bandit was killed, but the drivers were also killed. The composition remains without control. When turning, it derails and falls into the lake at high speed. Horror. The survivors of the crash are trying to get out of the wagon wreckage floating in the water and cope with their injuries. But then a terrible underwater monster appears from the darkness of the night. The toothy monster clearly does not like the guests who appeared in the middle of the night in his possessions. A slippery blue-gray reptile (reminiscent of the “Longoliers” by King and the creature from the third “Spiderman”), begins to “take” the unfortunate ones one by one. The monster gets even those who were able to get out on land and take refuge in an abandoned house. Of the five people, only Evelyn Hart survived. A barely alive wounded girl in the morning comes along the sleepers to the departure station. Mystic. The entertaining trip would have remained for its participants a tragic adventure and a fatal accident, if not for one “but”. At the station, Evelyn, who miraculously escaped, is told that no one knows anything about this train. The caretakers take the story of the robbery, the crash, and the monster with disbelief. Until the circumstances are clarified, she is locked in a closet, from which she disappears.
The situation is clarified by two circumstances: 1. Railway workers noticed that the girl reacts in a strange way to modern technology. 2. One of the old-timers of the station said that he knew her name. It turns out that in these places 96 years ago there was a train crash. It still remains a mystery, because at the scene of the tragedy, the police did not find the bodies of the dead. Among the passengers was a lady named Evelyn Hart.
Epilogue
On the understanding by the viewer that a ghost girl appeared at the station, the film D Railed ends. And it turns out that, having mixed different film genres “in one bottle”, Dale Fabrigar made a “detective story in reverse”, with an overlay of events from the past and our time. This is the intrigue of costumed entertainment, undertaken by a company of characters from among those who like to tickle their nerves.
Briefly explain the essence of the film D-Railed can be as follows. The survivors of a train accident nearly a hundred years ago have fallen into a “time hole”. After all, it is on days like Halloween that the partition between parallel worlds becomes almost invisible, the line between the living and the afterlife, the past and the present, is blurred.
If you think about the deep meaning of what is happening on the screen, then we are talking about the choice and the consequences of this choice. The fact that no one can decide for another, everyone decides for himself. The fact that in the struggle for survival people break down and give up, but you have to go to the end.
