Now playing in select cities nationwide, Come and Find Me, is a new thriller about the disappearance of a young woman and the search her boyfriend makes to track her down. Starring Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad), Come and Find Me is a playfully pulpy mystery in the same vein as Gone Girl where the deeper the search goes, the more questions arise that point to the missing person not being exactly who she says she is. Although Come and Find Me is a much more harebrained cat and mouse chase that loops in Russian gangsters and secret agents, it’s still tightly-wound and intriguing.
Come and Find Me launches into action when Los Angeles-residing David (Aaron Paul) wakes in his house one morning and finds the other side of the bed – the side his free-spirited girlfriend who calls herself Claire (Annabelle Wallis) sleeps in – empty. A worried David doesn’t find her at the dry cleaners where she works or the dark room she develops her pictures in, transforming him from normal graphic designer to a Philip Marlowe (which the movie lazily jokes at) entering a world of danger full of Russian mobs, a corrupt venture capitalist cult-leader (whose story is little more than merely introduced and conveniently dealt away with, and happens to lead him to the tax-incentivizing location of Canada). A final torture scene and guns-a-blazing showdown leave things in a totally different world than where we first started, and it’s part of this fun that Come and Find Me has.
Aaron Paul grounds Come and Find Me, which, for all of the whirling and tangential storylines, could have felt entirely ridiculous instead of just passably ridiculous, which is what the movie manages. The wide-ranging Paul plays all things that the movie requires of him at any moment, bringing cool-guy charm when first meeting Claire and in the fragments of their relationship, worry and anxiety that made his turn as Jesse in Breaking Bad an essential part of the classic series, and leading action-hero bravado when his heroics are required. Newcomer Annabelle Wallis brings a self-assured and strong performance to Claire, being at both times the uncertain and fun girl as well as a dangerous question mark, making her relationship with Paul’s David one where power and footing is traded at all times. At the heart of it, the two have sizzling chemistry, perhaps serving as the flick’s most substantial and steady element that makes the whole charade work.
Written and directed by Zack Whedon (younger brother of director Joss of The Avengers fame), the reason you may want to take on Come and Find Me is that, while it feels like camp, it still feels serious and worth following along for. It doesn’t hold up in terms of being entirely plausible per se, not caring to develop the story in full that actually answers any questions at to why Claire has disappeared and who she really is, and centers its whole drama around a generic roll of film that everyone wants to get their hands on– as it may expose a character– but none we have any firsthand relationship with. But despite all this, Come and Find Me manages to crackle with intrigue which makes this a fun-enough sleuth story.
112 minutes. “Come and Find Me” is rated R for language and some violence. Opens at the Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica and on VOD this Friday.
