Todd Verow\u2019s thriller \u201cYou Can\u2019t Stay Here\u201d takes viewers into the heart of the Ramble, Central Park\u2019s hook-up hot spot immortalized in William Friedkin\u2019s \u201cCruising,\u201d for a strange mystery loosely inspired by real events. It\u2019s 1993, and the AIDS crisis is still at its deadliest. Despite the risk and the constant nuisance of police harassment, gay men continue to find community and each other in the sun-strewn wooded haven hidden in plain sight. Rick (Guillermo D\u00edaz), a budding photographer, finds peace, affection, and subjects to photograph in the Ramble, including kind souls like Hale (Becca Blackwell) and regulars like the aptly named Raccoon Man. When a tall blonde stranger (Justin Ivan Brown) interrupts the tranquility and begins to murder men in the Ramble, Rick seeks out the truth before more men are killed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Verow, who wrote the script with his writing partner James Derek Dwyer, incorporates many familiar queer narratives and supernatural elements for a story with many twists and turns, some of which work better than others. In flashbacks and dreams, Rick\u2019s past traumas reveal the end of his marriage with his wife (Karina Arroyave) after she caught him naked with a man in their apartment, the sadness he feels when hugging his son (Andrew LaFerrera) goodbye, the guilt over his mother\u2019s (Marlene Forte) Alzheimer’s and painful accusations that his father left them because Rick was gay. That in itself is a lot to cope with even before a demonic popper-poppin\u2019 vamp commences a killing spree in Rick\u2019s neck of the woods.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Influenced by movies like \u201cCruising,\u201d “Peeping Tom,” and “Blow-Up,\u201d the script works up quite a bit of suspense\u2014especially when Rick is playing both voyeur as photographer and detective, as well as the target\u2014but struggles to sustain such anxiety in proximity to\u00a0a clumsy voiceover reading of Rick\u2019s inner monologue and an amateur supporting cast. When Rick decides to return to the forbidden scene of the crime, he tells the audience, \u201cOf course, I returned. Never is never a really long time. I always get sucked back in. All is forgotten, forsaken, forlorn for loins. The brain shuts down and the body takes over.\u201d This is not a one-time occurrence but a running inner monologue that takes the mystery away from D\u00edaz\u2019s performance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As Rick, D\u00edaz is the tender but tough spirit in the film. His performance channels Rick\u2019s pain from his past and present so clearly that any flashbacks or references to things that happened before the movie seem almost superfluous. Mostly dressed in black, with no intentions of standing out, he seems to be grieving; using his camera to connect with others in the Ramble before allowing himself to be vulnerable. Brown as his nemesis, the killer, makes good on his threatening trench coat presence with a razor-sharp knife and piercing blue eyes. There is no remorse or softness in his character, and in confronting this demon, Rick is able to find his confidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Todd Verow\u2019s thriller \u201cYou Can\u2019t Stay Here\u201d takes viewers into the heart of the Ramble, Central Park\u2019s hook-up hot spot immortalized in William Friedkin\u2019s \u201cCruising,\u201d for a strange mystery loosely inspired by real events. It\u2019s 1993, and the AIDS crisis is still at its deadliest. Despite the risk and the constant nuisance of police harassment, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[45,48],"class_list":["post-1298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horror-movies","tag-drama","tag-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}