I’ve seen a lot of films in my day about addiction of some form. More often than not, they’re about alcoholism, but sometimes, they’re about drug addiction. That’s the case with Continue.  It deals with one woman specifically,  but peripherally, it deals with a group of people who have an addiction of some kind or other.  This film is one of the best ones I’ve seen about this subject matter.

Dean, short for Nadine (Nadine Crocker), who is also the writer/director of the movie, is a woman who is having a breakdown. She has drunk herself into a stupor and takes a lot of pills. She has even cut herself to induce suicide. She’s lying in a puddle of blood when a loved one comes in and finds her unconscious. Miraculously she isn’t dead, instead, she ends up in a recovery treatment center for addicts.

There she learns what it takes to get clean. It’s not easy.  With the help of a nurse (Dale Dickey), and a psychologist (Emily Deschanel) she starts to peel back the layers of her problems. She has deep-seated regrets over past relationships and issues with her father. She makes a friend, Bria (Lio Tipton) who she can commiserate with about their pasts. They become what the other one needs to start on the road to recovery. 

Crocker captures what it would seem like it would be to be a drug addict perfectly. As well as a suicidal person. The screams for help were all around her. She brought every bit of emotion she could muster to the forefront as this character. As I said though she wasn’t the only one. Multiple actors did the same thing. She as a director got a lot of good performances out of this relatively unknown cast.

One actor I was familiar with was Shiloah Fernandez. He has been in a couple of things lately that I liked. He was perfectly cast as the love interest who had to show he cared and that he would leave this damaged woman. In fact, he had past traumas that resemble her own. Once they started talking and hanging out they noticed the things they had in common relative to their pasts. Fernandez is a fantastic young actor who has started coming into his own lately. The roles he’s getting show that very distinctly. I can’t wait for people to see him in Hellbent on Boogie.

The main topic of this movie is addiction and I can relate to that in the form of alcoholism.  I was an alcoholic and so was my father. It brought me down a dark path in my life. Like the characters in this film. One drink leads to two and so on and so on. The more you drink the more dumb decisions you make. That’s what it was like for me. I definitely made some bad decisions in my lifetime. Which caused me to make a change and that was to stop drinking anymore. I’m eleven years sober now. That is what you have to do. You need to get help or find a way to stop on your own.

Continue is the perfect title for this movie because you have to continue to go forward once you stop being an addict or alcoholic. I found it easier to not go into bars or restaurants with friends or family members who had bars. I found staying home was the best bet for me. That’s not always easy.  Getting a hobby as well helps. Mine is watching movies and television shows. Crocker shows the cost of addiction and how having a support system helps in the process of recovery. This was a good film for the message she was trying to convey to audiences. 

3 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen