Gary (Zach Cherry) and Ell’s (Maria Bakalova) are on a first date and they make a little pit stop, driving to a gas station with a car they steal from a shady motel owner, Burke (Tyler Labine). Driving a stolen car means that police officers may stop them, and they have to avoid those cops. Complicating matters is the fact that there’s a dead body in the car that they steal. That body temporarily comes alive, and this new couple play detective, discovering why Burke wants that man dead.

Along through All Night Wrong, the two broken protagonists eventually reveal their own baggage. Ell, despite being young and optimistic, endured enough as a widow and a single mom. Gary finds out that his wife is cheating on him and agrees to go on this date to have his own affair. Part of unlocking the mystery about the dead body in the trunk is unlocking a phone. And the only person who can unlock that phone is Gary’s romantic rival Chad (Preston Vanderslice).

All Night Wrong, from director Jason James is a mixed bag in all of its aspects, one of these aspects being the performances he tries to bring out from all of his actors. Cherry basically plays a loser who has his ups and downs on the worst first date ever. Playing cowards can go two ways, and he at least sticks the landing on being palatable. Bakalova, understandably, is at a year or two away from gelling while acting in English language productions.

This film is what happens when two people on a date stumble on to a crime scene, and a screenplay for something like All Night Wrong has its expected rollercoaster moments of highs and lows. At one point, the two characters are going to argue and strangers dive into amateur psychoanalysis. And then this movie quiets down as Gary and Ell rummage through a dead guy’s house. I get that movies need their levels but the transitions between those levels seemingly don’t work.

I also must point out how All Night Wrong contains aspects of modern cinema that I dislike, the first of those aspects being its dark cinematography which is unhelpful in this specific movie. That’s because most of the action here takes place during these characters’ worst nights ever. The film also has its share of plot devices to make sure the characters drift and converge. Ell plugs in the video card and rescues Gary in time, an obvious twist of many here.

All Night Wrong comes out in select Canadian theatres.