Memory Isn’t a Straight Line

Read Time:5 Minute, 28 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Hearse Chasing
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Genre: Documentary
Year Released: 2025, 2026
Runtime: 1h 20m
Director(s): Teresa Alfeld
Where to Watch: premieres May 13, 2026, on TELUS Optik TV Video on Demand channel 8 and TELUS Stream+. Simultaneously, the film will premiere on the TELUS originals YouTube channel at 7:00 pm PT / 8:00 pm MT on the same day and be available until May 31, 2026, in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month

RAVING REVIEW: There’s a hushed risk baked into deeply personal documentaries, especially ones built around trauma that never found complete resolution. Push too hard, and it can feel invasive. Hold back too much, and it risks becoming distant. HEARSE CHASING lands somewhere amongst those extremes, not always perfectly balanced, but consistently grounded in something that feels real rather than shaped for easy consumption.

Director Teresa Alfeld approaches this story without imposing structure on something that clearly resists organization. That choice defines the entire experience. Instead of guiding the audience, the film drifts in and out of memory, conversation, and reflection, mirroring how unresolved trauma operates. It doesn’t move forward in a straight line because Cassidy Waring’s understanding of her own past doesn’t either.

That lack of traditional impetus is both the film’s greatest strength and its most noticeable limitation. There are moments where the pacing feels intentionally loose, almost hesitant, as if the film itself is unsure how much it wants to uncover at once. For some viewers, that restraint will feel sincere. For others, it may feel like a missed opportunity to dig deeper into aspects of the story introduced but not fully explored.

What keeps the film anchored is Cassidy herself. There’s nothing performative about her presence here. She doesn’t present herself as someone who has already done the work and come out the other side. Instead, the documentary captures her in the middle of processing, still questioning, still circling memories that don’t yet make sense. That choice gives the film a rawness that can’t be manufactured. It’s not about resolution. It’s about the act of trying to understand.

Her relationship with her brother adds another overlay that the film could have leaned into even more. Their shared history is central to the emotion, but their perspectives don’t always get equal space to breathe. When the film allows those differences to surface, it becomes more compelling, showing how the same events can fracture into entirely different internal realities depending on who experiences them and how.

The use of archival footage and home videos works effectively without feeling overly curated. These moments don’t exist to provide context or exposition. They function more like fragments, pieces of a life that once felt stable before everything shifted. There’s a subtle discomfort in watching them, knowing what’s coming, even when the film doesn’t spell it out. That restraint helps maintain a sense of authenticity, though it also contributes to the film’s occasional feeling of emotional distance.

Where HEARSE CHASING finds its most distinct identity is in how it integrates music into the storytelling. Cassidy’s songwriting isn’t treated as a separate artistic outlet. It’s part of the process, another way of working through emotions that don’t translate in conversation. The film understands that some things are easier to express through performance than through explanation, and it leans into that without overemphasizing it.

The themes of addiction, abuse, and breakdown are present. However, they’re often approached at a distance, almost as if the film is respecting boundaries that remain intact even within the act of documenting. That’s understandable, especially given the personal nature of the story, but it does leave certain emotional beats feeling less fully realized than they could have been. The inclusion of therapy sessions introduces an interesting dynamic, offering a more structured space for reflection within an otherwise fluid narrative. These moments provide clarity, but they also shift the tone, creating a contrast between the rawness of personal memory and the language used to process it.

What the documentary avoids, to its credit, is the temptation to present healing as a destination. There’s no moment where everything clicks into place. No final revelation that reframes the entire story. Instead, it ends in a place that feels consistent with everything that came before it, still unresolved, still searching, still in progress.

At its best, HEARSE CHASING feels like a conversation that doesn’t have a clear endpoint. It’s messy, like real life, circling back on itself, leaving certain questions unanswered. That carries the film through its quieter stretches, even when the structure feels uneven or the emotional depth varies from moment to moment. There’s a version of this documentary that could have pushed harder, gone deeper, and delivered a more traditionally impactful emotional arc. But that version might have sacrificed the very thing that makes this one stand out. Instead of shaping the story into something more digestible, it allows it to remain complicated, unfinished, and at times uncomfortable to sit with. That choice won’t resonate the same way for every viewer, but it gives the film a sense of integrity that’s hard to ignore.

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[photo courtesy of TELUS, SIGIL FILMS]

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