For as long as I can remember, I’ve found myself wondering about the stories of complete strangers: The man quietly eating lunch by himself at a diner, the woman hurrying through the grocery store with a cart full of things and the Dragon Con attendee whose idea of the perfect costume was an Amazon shipping box. Every one of them is the main character in a life just as complicated as mine, yet our paths usually cross for only a few seconds.
We fill in the blanks with assumptions, never realizing how wrong we probably are.
The funny thing is we usually assume everyone else sees the world the same way we do. We take for granted that the things we recognize as ordinary are ordinary for everyone else. But what if someone genuinely experienced the world through an entirely different lens? Would we try to understand them, or would we simply dismiss them as confused?
That question sits at the heart of this week’s film: Lars Shrike Walks the Night.
Lars Shrike Walks the Night is a new film from writer-director Gary Walkow. The movie follows an older man named Lars (Kelsey Grammer), who finds himself stranded on what appears to be a desolate planet. His only companion is a sentient weapon called a Chrono-blaster (voiced by Laurie Drayton). With no memory of how he arrived there, Lars begins to fear that he has been abandoned on some kind of prison world.
But things are not quite what they seem, and the strange place he finds himself in may hold the key to discovering his true story.
This film is much more than it initially appears to be. Before sitting down to watch it, I did what I usually do and looked up a little information online. Everything I found pointed toward a modest, low-budget science fiction movie. A small cast, a mysterious desert planet and an older man trying to survive with only a talking weapon for company sounded intriguing enough. What I wasn’t expecting was for Gary Walkow to take me on a philosophical mind trip.
The deeper the story goes, the more it pulls the rug out from under both Lars and the audience. At first, we’re every bit as confused as he is. Then new pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place, sending the film in directions I never anticipated. About 30 minutes in, I found myself questioning everything I thought I knew.
Kelsey Grammer deserves a tremendous amount of credit for making Lars Shrike Walks the Night work. The film rests almost entirely on his shoulders, and he carries that weight with remarkable confidence. I initially saw Lars as little more than a stranded space refugee, desperately trying to survive on an alien world. As the story unfolded, however, Grammer slowly and almost effortlessly reshaped my perception of the character.
Every revelation peels back another layer, turning Lars into someone far more complex than I ever expected. By the time the credits roll, he has become one of the most fascinating and believable characters I’ve seen in quite some time. None of that would have landed without Grammer’s deeply committed performance.
This doesn’t mean the film is without its flaws. The very confusion I praised earlier can also become its biggest obstacle. Lars Shrike Walks the Night asks a great deal of its audience, and not everyone will be willing to stick with it long enough to appreciate where it’s headed. The deliberate slow-burn pacing can feel downright glacial at times, and there are moments when I found myself wanting the story to reveal its hand just a little sooner.
Even the ending leaves room for interpretation, and while I appreciate movies that trust their audience, this one occasionally teeters on the edge of being a little too clever for its own good. Its ideas are interesting enough, but there are times when it feels so determined to make me think that it forgot to make sure I could keep up.
I give Lars Shrike Walks the Night four out of five stars.
This isn’t a movie that will appeal to everyone, and it certainly asks more of its audience than the average science-fiction film. If you’re willing to embrace the uncertainty and let the story unfold at its own pace, though, the journey is well worth the effort.
And the next time you catch yourself making assumptions about the stranger across the room, remember that everyone has a story. You never know what story they’re living, especially if you’re only seeing one chapter.