Directed by Colin West
Written by Colin West and Sylvie Mix
Starring Sylvie Mix, Justin Rose, Jacob Rice, Maika Carter, Quinn Armstrong
Runtime: 1 hour 11 minutes
Unrated
Available to watch November 12

By Audrey Callerstrom, Associate Editor

If you died and were given two options, which of these two would you choose? Your first option is that you get one more day to be alive and make amends. Your second option is that you die, but you continue on as a ghost. You’re only seen by a select few. You watch your loved ones grow old and die. This is a question that the horror indie Double Walker raises, but never confronts.

From its first moments, you can tell that Double Walker is surrealist and focused on ambiance and mood rather than story. We see soft snow descend upon train tracks. We see a detached husband and wife (Maika Carter and Quinn Armstrong), as Armstrong delivers a eulogy for his young daughter. Minimal piano provides a soft score to these scenes. We see the mother (Carter) come home and knock over her Christmas tree, have a glass of wine, and slump on the couch. The father delivers the eulogy showing very little despair. It’s clear that the young girl died suddenly and tragically, and that mother and father grieve differently. Slow building scenes provide some idea into how the girl died, but it remains unclear.

What also remains unclear is how the girl comes back as a ghost, played by artist/actress Sylvie Mix (Poser), who is a full 15 years or so older than the girl who died. Nearly silent with dark undereye circles and white hair, the ghost wanders around in a long white T-shirt. She could pass for someone who escaped a hospital. Where is she from? What’s her name? None of the men who come into contact with her seem bothered my these unanswered questions. While the ghost seems naïve and unworldly, like an alien, she is actually seeking out the men involved with her murder to seek revenge.

This of course brings up some questions. Is the ghost really the young girl, or some sort of revenge spirit? She doesn’t move or act or speak like a child. She knows that she can use her sexuality to lure men, in a bit of a Promising Young Woman-like way, something a young girl wouldn’t know to do. And would a young girl really seek revenge as a ghost, or comfort? Some of these motives are rather puzzling, and it’s hard to look past these gaps in the script. In black and white, the ghost explains who when she died, she met a group of figures in the desert. Dressed in black, the three figures wear black cowboy hats, black coats, and a fringed mask covering their faces (not unlike Orville Peck). These are the ones that present the girl with her two options for the afterlife. The ghost explains this in voiceover to, it seems, her mom, whom she visits.

Most plot elements are revealed in voiceover, overlapping other scenes. Very little dialogue actually takes place, which is an interesting choice, to say the least. It also seems to play well within the confines of a meager budget. Explaining who can see the ghost from the beginning makes it clear why some people can see her and others can’t, which eliminates the need for any special effects. There’s even a bit of a love story at play here when the ghost encounters the harmless Jack (Jacob Rice), who reveals himself to be a believer, not a sinner. The nature of their relationship isn’t clear, and as soon as things start to develop and grow complicated, the film develops new rules which make the whole trajectory of the story confusing and the preceding events pointless. I do like the film’s dreamlike qualities, like the figures in the desert, and some of its music choices as well. This is the feature-film debut of writer/director Colin West, which might be why the film struggles with some of the story in its third act. The film rests on Mix’s shoulders, and although she isn’t given much to do, she’s an interesting and mysterious presence to look at, with her electric white hair and deep set eyes. Double Walker has some promising elements to it but ultimately, at a tight 71 minutes, it’s missing a full chunk of explanation and exposition to give later scenes meaning and depth.