He
would be the logical suspect when his girlfriend disappears, but not even Nancy
Grace would suspect this mild mannered graphic designer. More than a year
later, the distraught David still has not moved on. However, he starts to
suspect a larger conspiracy is afoot in Zack Whedon’s Come and Find Me (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.
If
Claire had simply left a note: “popped out for rugelach and fishing tackle,” it
could have spared David a lot of angst. Instead, he is left to wonder if he did
something to make her flee. After a year of posting flyers, David is pretty
much a hopeless wreck, until Claire’s old college friend Jackson crashes for a
day. Returning home early, David finds his guest ransacking the apartment
looking for something. When he comes to, he has the sense to check Claire’s
flower garden, finding a roll of undeveloped film.
Most
of the pictures look rather innocent, but they will lead him to several suspicious
businesses. The first is apparently a front for the Russian mob and the second
is a venture capital firm in Vancouver. Fortunately, he does not have any
trouble carrying the piece he picked up along the way on the train to the
British Columbian capital, which is good to know for future reference.
Zack
Whedon (of the screenwriting Whedon clan) definitely channels fugitive-style
Hitchcock and cynical 1970s paranoia into a surprisingly slick thriller. At
first, his constant flashbacks to David’s happier days with Claire (if indeed
that is her name) feel manipulative, but they start to pay-off as they reveal
possible clues to who and what she really was.
It
still remains unclear why the industry is so determined to make Aaron Paul a
leading man, but his underwhelming average dude screen presence actually fits
David quite well. We can definitely believe it when he gets disrespected,
intimidated, and beat-up. Consequently, we can also understand why he is so
hung-up on Claire, especially given the appealing give-and-take of his scenes
with Annabelle Wallis. Garret Dillahunt also adds a further spark as John Hall,
the tough talking mystery agent.
