The Best Film You Aren’t Watching Right Now (But Should!)

“Underrated” and “overrated” don’t really work when it comes to film criticism, and they don’t work because they exist outside of the work itself. I’ve tried to ween myself off of the terms, but they’re tough words to quit. We live in the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic age. A general consensus is sometimes valued more than a personal engagement with a film.

However, if I see a film and it leaves a strong impression, I need to recommend it, talk about it, maybe even argue about it. I’m not looking for a consensus so much as hoping to engage with it further. When I see a film that is so confident and strange and oddly moving as the one I’ve recently watched, I have to know if it works for others the same way it worked for me.

So with that, let me talk about this new film I just watched called I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore. I know. That’s a hell of a title. But that’s alright. It’s a hell of a film. It’s funny, scary, sweet, and visceral. I held my breath the last ten minutes. Not necessarily because it was intense (though it most definitely is that), but because I wanted the film to stick the landing.

It absolutely does.

The film is the debut feature from Macon Blair (the star of such indie gems as Blue Ruin and Green Room). It’s amazingly assured with a firm, even enviable, grasp on tone. The film switches from indie drama to dark comedy to violent thriller with ease, never sputtering as it switches gears. There’s a touch of Fargo-esque absurdity as it reaches the final act. It shares with the Coen brothers films an affinity for taking ridiculous elements and twisting them until they reach the macabre. And, like the Coens, the film doesn’t stop there. It takes the macabre and transcends it, pulling us out from the darkness at the last second before launching us toward the sublime.

I haven’t talked about the plot, and I don’t think I really want to. The events of the film are almost incidental to what constitutes its heart: the characters and their warring outlooks. Just know that Melanie Lynskey gives a wonderfully calibrated performance as Ruth, a woman having something close to an existential crisis when she realizes that most people around her are only concerned with themselves. From there, it goes to some unexpected, frequently frightening, places.

The film does what some of my favorites do: create a world and a tone so unique that you never see the seams. I didn’t know where the film was taking me until the end and, looking back, that destination is inevitable and right. Some may balk at the violent turns of the third act, but I don’t know if I can go along with those criticisms: the film does indeed go off the rails but it does so with more than a hint of inevitability. Going off the rails was the only way this film could have stayed true to its gonzo vision.

And, when it comes to what’s in cinemas right now, there aren’t nearly enough gonzo visions out there. They’re kind of underrated.