Eric McGinty’s “Stockade,” made in 2023, has only screened at two film festivals prior to its arrival on VOD. Given the amount of gatekeeping that goes on behind the scenes, that’s not necessarily a sign of its lack of quality. In this case, it turns out to be one. “Stockade” displays technical incompetence in acting, writing, and editing, stretching out a story that might fill a 20-minute short to a painfully elongated 88 minutes. If it were a student film, that’d be one thing, but as a work sent out into the world by a director with another feature and two shorts under his belt, it’s an embarrassment.
Ahlam (out actor Sarah Bitar) is lying in bed when she receives a call from her mother in Lebanon. The artist is now trying to make a go of life in Brooklyn, but she has difficulty earning a living. She works as a babysitter to an Arab-American child, whose mother insists Ahlam speak to her in Arabic. Paul (cinematographer Guy de Lancey), who has been injured in a recent accident and now needs a cane, offers her a well-paying job. Since he can’t leave his apartment, he asks her to travel upstate to a house in Kingston with a package. For all the errand’s mystery, he assures her she’s not being used as a drug mule. When she arrives at the house, she opens the package and finds artwork from Iraq. Richard (McGinty) arrives to collect it, promising he’ll return the next day. He does not show up. Instead, a couple confront Ahlam. The man gives her a bottle of water laced with drugs, and once she passes out, the two kidnap her.
Many of the basic elements of filmmaking grammar become far more visible in their absence. “Stockade” is not an experimental film. It would love to be a thriller, but its editing and writing generate no tension. In fact, its cuts are subtly jarring, making for a grating experience. Why does it take its eye away from two women’s conversation to insert a brief shot of a pool of carp? Why does a shot-reverse shot sequence going back and forth between people in the room look as though the lighting and cinematography are far different for each person? Why didn’t McGinty recognize that the color grading needed to be done carefully, so that these shots match each other? Full of unintended awkwardness, most dialogue scenes exist solely to drop a piece of information, supposedly pushing the narrative forward. The script may as well be the product of an AI who has never actually heard two people engaged in small talk.
Bitar’s performance leaves her character’s emotions barely visible. After being drugged, kidnapped, escaping and returning home to Brooklyn, Ahlam shows few signs of these events’ long-term impact. In real life, she would probably be more tense meeting a stranger alone in her studio afterwards. “Stockade” never establishes the time frame of these events. Do weeks or months go by between her escape and her return to a painter’s life back in Brooklyn?
For a film based around the struggle to stay our of poverty and retain a visa to stay in the US, it can’t create an aura of danger. (Mc Ginty describes it as an “immigrant film noir,” stating his desire to center “characters and situations that are under-represented in most mainstream films.”) Even the kidnappers are as polite and unthreatening as they could possibly be. While the precariousness of an immigrant’s life is part of the story, it never feels truly inhabited. Nor is there the slightest anger behind the references to America’s wars in the Middle East and the history of looting antiquities for Western museums. It’s all just a story, badly told.
“Stockade” | Directed by Eric McGinty | In English and Arabic and French with English subtitles | Freestyle Digital Media | Available on VOD Feb. 25th
