True crime, or anything with that flavor, is all the rage across a variety of media. For most, it is the lure of not knowing. The line that is crossed, a person vanishes, unlikely to be heard from again. Of course, until someone somewhere finds them, or what’s left of them. This is the nature and feeling that comes from writer-director Ashley Nicole’s Clocking Out.
“…the mystery of a man named Randy Duvall who vanished from his residence…”
The premise is inviting: the mystery of a man named Randy Duvall (Chase Eastman) who vanished from his residence in a small Texas town on October 21, 1988. And so, Ashley Nicole’s brief but intriguingly structured narrative takes us into the spaces between what we suspect and all we know to be true. The polarizing intensity of things gone cold and left unsolved, and people struggle to move on without closure. Every once in a while, there come crumbs of developments, but that dwindles into forgetfulness. Until everyone’s worst feelings arrive.
The observing of the details with distance and context adds the narrative’s depth, belied by its length. Instead of a full recount, this short feels like a moody, sensory recap of how slyly and swiftly human life ends.
Clocking Out has the draw of a compelling landscape of silence and secrecy before the crime’s outcome surfaces. That’s where the strength of its story lies. Magnifying the deadening drone of the spaces in between our movements and lives, either lived to the full, or taken through medical, accidental, or evil means.
"…a moody, sensory recap of how slyly and swiftly human life ends."
