1,000 miles from shore, no one can save you.

Director Matthew Losasso’s feature debut Row takes the oceanic survival thriller and places it in an unnervingly claustrophobic setting. When a blood-stained rowing boat washes up on the Scottish coast, sole survivor Erin (Bella Dayne) is found with no memory of what happened to her missing crew. As fragments of her ordeal begin to resurface, the line between truth and paranoia blurs, leaving her — and the audience — to question what really happened on the North Atlantic.

What makes Row compelling is its stripped-down intensity. Confined largely to a rowing boat and a handful of central characters, the film thrives on its sense of isolation. Much like Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, the limited setting heightens every glance, every fraying nerve, and every creeping suspicion. Losasso’s direction makes clever use of both the open sea and the more intimate water tank sequences, ensuring the tension never feels stagey or static.

Bella Dayne carries the film with a strong, layered performance, keeping Erin’s vulnerability and resilience in constant conflict. Around her, Sophie Skelton, Akshay Khanna, and Nick Skaugen add fuel to the psychological fire, feeding the audience’s doubts about who can be trusted. The film’s visual texture — captured in Caithness and along the Scottish coast — lends a bleak beauty to the ordeal, a reminder of nature’s indifference to human suffering.

If there’s a drawback, it’s that the narrative occasionally drifts into familiar survival-horror beats, and some viewers may find its final revelations less impactful than the gripping tension leading up to them. Still, as a debut feature, it’s a confident and unsettling piece of work that thrives on mood, anxiety, and the psychological unravelling of its characters.

The Prognosis:

Row doesn’t reinvent the genre, but it demonstrates that Losasso is a director with a keen eye for atmosphere and psychological stakes. Tightly woven, quietly haunting, and with shades of Hitchcockian influence, this is a thriller that pulls you in and refuses to let go.

• Saul Muerte