Producers: Eric B. Fleischman and Maurice Fadida   Director: Mickey Keating   Screenplay: Mickey Keating   Cast: Jocelin Donahue, Joe Swanberg, Melora Walters, Richard Brake, Jeremy Gardner and April Linscott   Distributor: RLJE Films/Shudder

Grade: C

Visuals take precedence over narrative in Mickey Keating’s creepshow about strange goings-on on an island that closes itself off from outsiders during the off-season by simply shutting down the bascule bridge connecting it to the Florida mainland.  Or at least most of them: a couple that are let in just before the annual closure find themselves trapped there, for a sinister reason of course.

The two are Marie Aldrich (Jocelin Donahue) and her friend George Darrow (Joe Swanberg), who arrive during a blinding storm in response to a letter from the caretaker at the local cemetery, asking Marie to come urgently because her mother Ava’s grave has been vandalized.  The bridge attendant (Richard Blake) initially refuses to open the gate, telling them that the closure starts the following day, but when they press him he relents, warning them that they’ll have only twenty-four hours before they’’ be stranded for months.

When they reach the cemetery, they find that the grave has in fact been desecrated, apparently because someone thought she had occult powers, but the caretaker is nowhere to be found.  The only person Marie encounters is the ghostly figure of elderly Miss Emily (April Linscott), who describes herself as the local florist and offers a few ambiguous remark before vanishing into the mist that envelops the place. 

Marie and George then proceed to a bar down the road, where the odd gaggle of patrons simply freeze in place when they walk in—an eerie sight—and then treat them with indifference or hostility.  The only person who offers any help is a fisherman (Jeremy Gardner), though whether his approach indicates friendliness or an attempt to hit on Marie is unclear.

Their search for the caretaker continues, but an auto accident separates them, and Marie goes on alone, investigating shuttered stores and houses and encountering frights along the way.  Her only assistance comes from that fisherman, who may or may not be of real help.  Throughout she’s weighed down by recollections of Ava, who suffered from dementia in her later years and rambled on hysterically about the history of the island, her birthplace, and a curse on the place involving a demon from the sea.  She’s also puzzled by how her mother had come to be buried there, since Ava had been adamant about not wanting for her body to be returned to a place she’d fled.

Marie and George are eventually reunited, but not in the way she’d have hoped.  Their reconnection does, however, bring an explicit explanation for what’s been happening, which unfortunately turns out to be fairly predictable.  That leads to the last of Marie’s long series of running scenes in the film—this time across the bridge to the mainland.  But since the structure’s been raised by its keeper, she has to watch and instructional video about how to lower it—a sequence that provides some amusing, and much needed, suspense.  And a coda shows her fate—once again, none too surprising.

Much the best thing about “Offseason” is the atmosphere Keating’s tech collaborators—production designer Sabrena Allen-Biron and cinematographer Mac Fisken—have created, which, abetted by the sound design by Shawn Duffy and score by Shayfer James—generates a spooky, if not really scary, mood marked by slate-gray skies, deserted beaches, rain-drenched roads, creaky buildings and, of course, a gloomy cemetery. Valerie Krulfeifer’s editing, unhappily, is hobbled by Keating’s decision to divide the story into unnecessary chapter and shuffle the chronology, which merely confuses matters rather than increasing tension.

As to the acting, Donahue must carry the film pretty much on her own, and does a decent, if hardly revelatory, job.  She certainly runs and screams well.  Most everyone else, including Swanberg, give blasé performances, though Walters stands out (though not in a good way) for being overwrought, and Brake and Linscott are, if one-note, coolly macabre.

The short running-time makes a visit to Keating’s latest tolerable, but it’s not a vacation spot you need seek out.