Here we go…
Main Cast: Rusty Joiner, Sigrid La Chapelle
Director: Christophe Deroo
Well that was unfortunate. The best thing—and by best, I mean only good thing—about SAM WAS HERE was the end credit music that reminded me of the beat under Peter Schilling’s Major Tom. Other than that … wow, it was terrible. And I was really excited by the premise of a man whose car breaks down and he’s attacked on the highway. I thought this was going to be one of those fight for survival under impossible conditions movies. Instead I got JACOB’S LADDER IN THE DESERT. And the only way that story really works is if you don’t know it’s that kind of story. But I called this one 20 minutes in.
The titular Sam (Rusty Joiner, DODGEBALL) is on the road as a salesman, stuck on a beat where he hasn’t met a single person, out in the desert, trying desperately to get back home to LA where his wife and kid are. He keeps calling, leaving messages about how much he misses them, but his wife never answers.
He goes into a store, takes a few things, leaves some money on the counter, and checks himself into a motel where the next morning one of the doors is barricaded with chains crisscrossing it to keep it closed. At the motel, he, once more, sees no one, but leaves a note on the register “Sam was here.”
And as if the past two days haven’t been weird and unsettling enough, he keeps getting messages on his pager, calling him names. And then he turns on the radio and discovers his name is out there as being the identity of a child murderer in the area.
From there, things just go straight to hell for Sam, which is probably a more accurate description than any other because I won’t mince words, I’m pretty sure this entire movie is Sam’s trip through hell. And while it’s never stated in so many words by the ending, writer/director Christophe Deroo has said that the ending was not so important to be understood, but only the atmosphere, like a painting (to which I would like to add a big fat “go fk yourself”), that is CLEARLY what’s happening.
The absolutely ripped Rusty Joiner, who does not belong in this role—not because of his acting but because of his physique; those are not the biceps of a down on his luck door to door salesman!—stars as Sam, and looking at his past credits, most of which are one-offs on various TV shows over the years, he was probably just glad to be starring in a MOVIE. It’s just too bad that movie had to be SAM WAS HERE as opposed to the start of an action franchise, which is obviously where he belongs.
He seemed like a pretty good actor, but I was constantly distracted by the size of his arms in this role. And I’m actually fine with that because it gave me something to focus on over the downright ridiculousness of the rest of the “plot”, as it were.
The only other character of note here was the California desert which looked terribly brutal and not a place you want your car to be stranded. Especially if things turn out the way they did for Sam after he drove over a set of road spikes.
I feel like this entire ordeal was just put together so Deroo could hit the audience with this ending, which I bet he thought was so brave and in your face and dangerous. And maybe once upon a time, it might have been. But this was released in 2016, and we’ve seen this movie, and others like it, dozens of times by now. I’m just grateful it was so short and I didn’t have to sit through an entire 90 minutes of this. I’ve seen JACOB’S LADDER, that about did it for me and this genre; everything after that is just a tire retread of a much better, and more effective, movie.
I watched SAM WAS HERE on Shudder.
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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