Ella Balinska is primarily known for kicking butt in the most recent Charlie’s Angels movie, and while that action film came with a certain level of physicality, it’s nothing compared to what she endures in the sci-fi survial thriller, The Occupant. The feature debut of director Hugo Keijzer, an expansion of his short film from a few years ago, it offers Balinska the meatiest role of her career as a woman who endures threats of an environmental, human, and supernatural nature while she also struggles with grief.
In The Occupant, Balinska plays geologist Abby Brennan, who loves her terminally ill sister Beth more than anything in the world, even more than her own happiness it seems. She would risk anything to save her, and so Abby does just that by heading to Russia-occupied Georgia to find uranium in hopes that the money it gains will be enough to pay for an experimental treatment. What she finds is a strange, black rock with unusual properties. But when she attempts to get home to sell it, her helicopter crashes in the harsh wilds of the Georgian Caucasus, leaving her with nowhere to turn. Rob Delaney voices the American pilot, John, who she makes radio contact with and sets her on a course to find him so they can find a way to safety.
Shot in the frigid Georgian climate, The Occupant is a grueling test of endurance that finds Abby a lone figure on the most perilous of journeys. With so few human characters, Mother Nature herself seems to be Abby’s primary nemesis. The limestone mountains prove a determined foe, the snow rages against her every step, the ice threatens to crack beneath her feet, the wind tears at her skin. Balinska holds up like a champion in what must’ve been the most rugged shoot of her young career, and wonderfully captures Abby’s transformation along the way. The hardened armor she put up to shut out the reality of her sister’s illness begins to shatter, the hardship changing her on an almost primal level. Balinksa powers through the kind of performance nobody can truly be prepared for. There are more than a few times where it looks as if she might actually be drowning in the icy waters, or is about to topple off the mountainside, or has broken a bone.
There’s probably a better version of The Occupant that excludes the extraterrestrial element. The mystery of John and the black ore adds little to Abby’s psychological ordeal, and actually undercuts the enlightenment she struggled so hard to achieve. Ultimately, it’s Abby’s will to survive, not just for herself but for her dying sibling, that proves stronger than the elements and the otherworldly, and that should not be so easily ignored.
The Occupant opens on October 8th from Decal Releasing.
