At the very beginning of Elko, a teenage girl on an internet message board types, “i am 23 and want to die. i can travel anywhere.” She lucks out and flies to Elko, Nevada, where she meets a young man, whom we assume is going to assist in her suicide. But, this isn’t an ordinary conveniently available killer-for-hire kind of guy, this one has some strange methods up his sleeve before Girl gets what she came for.
There’s not much dialogue in Elko; before the final showdown, the helpless victim and helpful killer pass time by blowing up plastic bottles filled with dry ice and watch videos of dogs playing and people having unpleasant sex on the internet. Not sure what Girl was expecting on this suicide mission, but these things probably weren’t on the list of things she expected to happen.
The idea of Elko is unique. Its goal is to exploit one of the cruelties the internet has to offer, and in this case, an under-the-radar message board for sociopaths looking for vulnerable, young suicidal girls. But its execution is not convincing that a suicidal teenager would fly somewhere to have someone assist her in offing her self-loathing self. To mix things up a bit, it would have been more engaging if the two had more conversations with each other, leading the audience to believe the story could take a huge turn. This story could have really shocked the audience and went even darker if it wanted to, but runs its straight-forward course.
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