Bullet Points: Rust Creek (2018)
I had no intention of reviewing this film from 2018 which had totally slipped under my radar but a slow night at work and an inability to choose between re-watching Gladiator or Naked Gun led us to watching this film that no one had ever heard of. Sometimes things just work out this way…
Synopsis: An overachieving college student gets lost on her way to a job interview. A wrong turn leaves her stranded deep in the Kentucky forest.
- The runner: The first couple of things we learn about Sawyer (Hermione Corfield) is that she’s a pretty darn good runner and that she is going places. Not only is she killing it as an athlete but she receives a call about a job (internship?) opportunity in Washington D.C. and we’re off and running with our reason for her trip. It’s a subtle scene that shows us her work ethic with TELLING us but also gives her a reason for her trip. Good start.
- GPS < map: Next is her trip. Music and montages are often used for this type of thing but the film follows us a bit as she hears the radio reports of an accident up ahead. It drives her off of the highway and onto some backroads that guys like me grew up on and still loves driving. For Sawyer, though, she immediately gets lost and finds herself making the second of many mistakes in this film. A map is your friend!
- Dumbass brothers: No matter how smart they tell me that Sawyer is she is made infinitely smarter by putting her up against these two idiots. Morons Hollister and Buck come upon her as she’s staring blindly at her map and essentially try to force her onto their property for some “dinner and drinks”. She’s smart enough to realize that is a bad idea and fights it out with the two. My goodness….it doesn’t take long for Sawyer to kick their asses but Buck gets in a stab wound on her leg before she runs off into the woods.
- Cooking with gas: I’m already not afraid of the two idiots who started this mess but they make it even more so when she just strolls away from them and they head home. Eventually, her lack of knowledge of the area, loss of blood, and lack of any sustenance cause her to pass out and get found by another random dude (potential rapist). Backwoods Kentucky is hard….
- Give me one reason to stay here: This one isn’t so bad. Instead of being raped silly she gets found by the good-hearted meth cooker who nurses her back to health and begins to fall in love. It’s a tale as old as time. You know the one where the nearly dead girl falls in love with the drug maker who could easily just drive her into town at any time. It humanizes Lowell (Jay Paulon), drug guy, but just makes Sawyer look like an idiot as she slowly starts to enjoy hanging out in his trailer and learning about cooking meth.
- Lesson learned: You can’t just live in that trailer forever, girl! Not to mention, the drug game has too much money invested in it for her to just be left alone. The bad guys are still looking for her and they finally get the idea that she might be hiding in the one place she shouldn’t be. It’s all too easy to figure out. In fact, that was my biggest problem with this film; it’s lack of real twists. Nothing that happens is ever really surprising.
- Them city folk: This film isn’t a good look for small town Kentucky. Sawyer doesn’t spend 6 minutes there before inbred rednecks are coming up to her Jeep Cherokee and trying to give her the old “Toledo two-fingered slip”. She’s forced to use her wits, her athletic prowess, and her total lack of ability to survive in the elements to keep from getting violated. She makes so many bad decisions in this film that she should have been dead before you could say the words “Deliverance still freaks me out”, but her attackers were a whole different breed of stupid and she was still able to outsmart them, solve the big crime, and make it back in time for her job interview. I bet she killed it, too.
The Verdict: Rust Creek is one of those films that never feels like it leaves first or second gear. It never gets wild enough to truly feel like Sawyer’s situation gets to be in that real life or death phase. Maybe I’m wrong here. The couple of guys who injure her and search through the woods for her wounded body are some of the dumbest I’ve seen in a film in a long time and only make her job of surviving that much easier. I wish that the film had widened a few of the shots or maybe thrown in a drone shot every once in a while to remind me of how vast the woods can be in Kentucky. I think it would have helped her feeling of isolation and fear instead of what we got. I’ve certainly seen worse films and Hermione Corfield was just fine in the lead role but Rust Creek isn’t a movie that I see myself revisiting. I preferred Sweetheart for my lady empowerment/survival film and never felt like the director or the actors got to fully let loose. Give it a try if you feel into it but don’t expect it to stray much from your expectations.
