Collin meets his ex girlfriend Jess at a coffee house, ostensibly to get her back, she leaves before he works up the courage to try. As she drives out of his life she calls him on her cell phone, as they speak she gets into a terrible car accident. But Collin gets the chance to chase fate and change things as he repeats the encounter over and over again. He makes different choices, boldly asserting his feelings for Jess while at the same time trying to keep her from getting into an accident.
This is a tight short film, well shot with excellent production values and a good look. The acting is uneven but Natalie Bain turns in a good performance as Jess. The subject matter is nothing new and forgive me, but ‘Chasing Fate’ has a fatalistic tone that for me undercut what was an interesting relationship between the two characters. Collin acts to protect someone he loves and he suffers the consequences of that choice, but the characters are not given the chance to learn anything from the mistaken effort at changing fate. Instead of saying something about human relationships we get the generic message that it’s a bad idea to try to change fate. This effectively reduces the film to a well made, one note, message movie.
