This comic crime drama set in Oregon (but filmed in British Columbia) follows a familiar path, establishing a clever premise in which an ordinary guy must take extraordinary means to survive.  It hits a great many obvious tropes along the way but it also finds enough ingenuity and believability to serve as an effective little thriller.

L. Gustavo Cooper’s film involves illegal lumber cutting in Oregon and a hunt for a bag of illicit money made from that crime.  Plumber Robert Mitchell (Henry Thomas — yes, the grown-up kid from E. T. – The Extra-Terrestrial) finds himself beneath a cabin in its title area, dodging the bullets of a duo of bloodthirsty killers (Bradley Stryker, C. Ernst Harth) and awaiting rescue by local law enforcement, which is slowly piecing the pieces of the plot together.  Will they arrive in time?

In order for a movie like this to succeed it needs to be smart.  As in, the main character must be innovative enough to convincingly find a way to beat the guys with the guns.  Making Mitchell a plumber goes a long way toward that goal while also providing for the inevitable poop jokes.  It’s kind of like Home Alone in its use of booby traps and tools to maim, only this story is much more brutal.  It also needs a nice twist near the end, and it delivers; I did not guess the identity of the mastermind).

Movies like this are easy to find and evidently pretty cheap to make, since there are so many of them to be seen on cable television.  There’s nothing really special about it and I may not even remember it in a year’s time.  But for an hour-and-a-half I was engrossed, wondering why the bad guys just didn’t try to dig through the floor as I would have done in their place.  Still, you could do a lot worse than this tidy little thriller.  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  31 July 2023.