Here
in meth country, chemical literacy is nearly as high as the drop-out rate. You
could say college student Sawyer Scott’s faulty GPS put her in the wrong place,
at the wrong time, but there is never a right time for her to be here. Two
rustic locals quickly take things in a Deliverance
direction, but their motives for stalking Scott are more conventionally
criminal in Jen McGowan’s Rust Creek (trailer here), which opens tomorrow
in New York.
Being
professionally ambitious and personally reserved, Scott did not tell anyone she
was driving to a job interview in DC over Thanksgiving break. That will look
like a rather dubious decision when she crosses paths with brothers Hollister
and Buck Pritchert. They seem to want to kill her right from “hello,” but Scott
is surprisingly hard to kill. Unfortunately, she loses quite a bit of blood
from a stab wound. She will get patched up by Lowell Pritchert, the brothers’
meth-cooking cousin, but it is unclear to Scott whether he has “saved” her. Regardless,
she doesn’t have much choice when it comes to accepting his offer of
protection, at least for the short term.
It
is really hard to make a hill-and-hollow drug-dealing thriller without
trafficking in a bunch of snarky stereotypes. Arguably, the last film to pull
it off was The World Made Straight. McGowan
shows a fair amount of restraint when it comes to gawking at the hicks, but
there are still times in Rust Creek when
you can hear “Dueling Banjos” in your mind’s ear.
Nevertheless,
screenwriter Julie Lipson deserves credit for some nicely drawn supporting
characters. Sheriff O’Doyle is also quite an intriguing villain. It is no real
spoiler to call out his compromised nature, but Sean O’Bryan’s performance dramatically
distinguishes him from the Rogue’s Gallery of corrupt country sheriffs we have
seen before.
Frankly,
Scott is the film’s blandest character, by a considerable measure. Still, Hermione
Corfield handles the intense physical scenes pretty convincingly. Jay Paulson
is believably squirrely as Lowell P., mostly in interesting ways and Jeremy
Glazer adds some depth of character as Deputy Katz. On the other hand, Micah
Hauptman and Daniel R. Hill are exactly what you would expect from the knuckle-dragging
Pritcherd Brothers.
There
is nothing shocking or groundbreaking about Rust
Creek, but McGowan rather exceeds expectations with the taut, tense
execution. Viewers who are paying attention might also pick up a thing or two
about mixing common household chemicals into something new and exciting. Recommended
as an eventual streaming service or down-priced VOD selection, Rust Creek opens this Friday (1/4) in
New York, at the IFC Center, and also releases on iTunes.
