A Trip Elsewhere review (2024)

A Trip Elsewhere has a lot going on. It’s the kind of film that would be very interesting to revisit again if director/co-writer/co-lead J.R. Sawyers had a larger budget to fully explore his vision.

Even with obvious financial restraints, it’s admirable how Sawyers aims so high to push the boundaries to tell this story. Despite its flaws, it’s a captivating film that keeps viewers engaged until the final credits.

Sawyers and co-writer Jay Gutierrez set A Trip Elsewhere during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic hasn’t really been gone long enough to seemingly make for a ripe time period to explore for entertainment, but it does make for a solid setting here.

Sorina (Andrea Geones, Resident Alien) is getting a nap in her car when her best friend, Amy (Maura Mannle) calls. Being isolated and the depressing dating app scene has left her frustrated until she came across some LSD — a “we’ll get to it later” idea she had with her ex — in a kitchen cabinet. Not wanting to go an acid trip alone, Amy recruits Sorina to come over.

For Sorina, doing something this potentially irresponsible means shirking on her responsibilities as a mother to a relative newborn baby girl. At least Sorina can rely on her neighbor, Tina (Harriette Coggs Stuckey), to babysit.

As Sorina arrives at Amy’s, she happens to run into her old college ex, Lenny (Hayes Dunlap). Lenny is a producer who’s feeling the stress of productions being shut down. He was in the neighborhood to deliver a pizza to Dale (Sawyers), a burnt-out paramedic suffering from insomnia.

For reasons Sawyers and Guiterrez fail to make fully clear, Amy basically pleads with a complete stranger and Sorina’s long-ago ex to share in the LSD party. There is a peculiar lack of good judgement here as Amy has no idea if these two dudes are weirdos who would feign to take the LSD to take advantage of her and Sorina while they’re tripping out.

This gathering of the characters also came off very convoluted. It seemed like there could have been some other ways for the characters to converge in a more organic, believable manner.

Unsurprisingly, A Trip Elsewhere starts getting interesting once the four take the LSD. Initially it seems like Sawyers just wanted to try his hand at stoner films like How High, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Half Baked. This occurs far too early in the film to have keep it entertaining for such an extended period.

Thankfully, Sawyers and Guiterrez take the film to a different angle. Sorina, Amy, Lenny and Dale start having a shared psychedelic vision before branching off into their own distinct hazy dream scenarios.

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Sorina’s is the most intriguing as she reconnects with her parents, who died in a boating accident. Setting the film during the pandemic seemed like an obvious cause of death for her parents, which could have reinforced her apprehension about being around others and overall uncertainty of passing COVID onto her daughter.

Through her trip, Sorina occasionally chats with Lenny, who keeps trying to get her to see the truth about her psychedelic experiences.

All around, the cast is solid. There are no jarringly noticeably awful performances. The main cast has a good sense of their characters and play them consistently throughout. Geones might be the strongest performer as she has Sorina tackle a gamut of emotions in a very realistic fashion.

Amy’s trip scenario has potential as she is now married to her ex, and they have children. Ultimately, her subplot just kind of fizzles out without much substantial revelations. It does provide some comic relief moments.

As the group starts to go further into their shared vision, Sawyers gets more ambitious with the special effects. He pulls some off adequately while others look like they could use some more time in the editing room. At points through A Trip Elsewhere, it felt like Sawyers would throw in some wild colorization, distortion or imagery just because he can instead of it really adding to the story.

Sawyers deserves credit for trying to do more with less, but in some cases, he would be better served by using 20 special effects in a scene as opposed to 60.

A Trip Elsewhere is a film that avoids feeling too familiar, opting for a heavy dose of spectacle without losing sight of the characters centered around it.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Photo Credit: Crimson Wing Films

You can check out A Trip Elsewhere now on Amazon Prime.

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