A lot of bad came from the recent economic recession, but as far as entertainment goes one upside was the emergence of the kind of drama we could each of us relate to. Our love for forensic science and superheroes will never fade, but recent years have brought us a new common denominator. The gritty down-on-his-luck anti-hero, driven to great and terrible things by the forces most of us have felt. The most obvious and recent character audiences embraced in this category is Breaking Bad’s Walter White, and indeed it’s nearly impossible to watch After The Fall and not think of him.

In the film Wes Bentley is well cast as Bill Scanlon, a mild-mannered insurance adjuster. Devoted to his family and determined not to worry them or admit defeat, he keeps it to himself when he loses his job, choosing instead to leave the house every morning as though going to work, and spending his days in parking lots and his car trying to find other work. His wife Susan (Vinessa Shaw) is none the wiser and his two sons carry on as usual. When the pressures of having no income pile up and the stream of judgement from his wealthy father-in-law roll over him, he finds himself taking his gun out of his safe and wandering out into the desert outside his Albuquerque suburban neighborhood to potentially do something drastic. But while Bill hardly has the demeanor for suicide, he stumbles into a model home and happens across a philandering couple. They see the gun, offer up their wallets, and finding the whole affair to be a lot easier than he’d ever have imagined, Bill takes it.

This introduction to easy money kickstarts Bill’s life of crime, mostly restricted to petty theft of small businesses. With his new income, Bill finds his confidence come back to him, and by preying on those who he’s noticed to be rather deserving of punishment anyway, he’s able to justify his behavior as somewhat altruistic. Of course, Bill can’t help but be the innately good guy that he is, so it’s no surprise when he makes friends with the lonely and distraught cop Frank (Jason Isaacs). Frank begins to investigate the building cases of theft at gun point while simultaneously getting to know Bill and his family. The inevitability of Frank connecting the dots is a no-brainer, but the intriguing parts of this film lie in Bill’s own guilt around his actions.

First time director Saar Klein has most notably built his career around editing—a few times for the great Terrence Malick. His film has a dreamy neutral-toned feel to it that is very Malick-esque and his pacing and dedication to themes of relationship in the film are also similar. However, unlike Walter White, living in a similar Albuquerque suburb and choosing a similar career path of crime, Bill’s motivations seem entirely less plausible and less gripping. His choices reflect that of a coward at best, and even more so as those of happenstance. More intriguing are the decisions of those around him. Wes Bentley is an excellent actor, and he plays Bill with a likable innocence that makes his crimes more funny than dramatic. What’s missing is another level of depth to Bill, not written into the script. A sense of how his actions change him, as it seems plausible any sort of dramatic turn as this would leave him different. Or even a further analysis of the darkness inside Bill that would make him capable of this level of deceit.

Similarly Isaacs’ detective Frank wears his issues on his sleeve, openly showcasing his self-imposed exile as divorcée and missing father. Even his gruff accent paints a sense of obviousness on him. Add a stereotypical drunkenness and penchant for guns and here’s a typical movie cop. Adding to the confusion is a horribly misrepresentative movie poster. Wes Bentley with gun in hand and an American flag behind him? The silly tag line of “Desperate times call for dangerous measures.” If it’s meant to be ironic, I have a feeling that will be lost on most people. This is not an action film. Bill Scanlon isn’t an all-American man.

After the Fall starts strong, pulling in anyone who recalls the difficulty of the recession or relates to a man on the brink. And don’t get me wrong, I love a story of moral ambiguity, but Klein fails to push in further leaving us wanting. Bill’s tale is interesting, and the ending certainly leaves us with no real sense of closure, but more than that is a lack of layers in Bill’s character and psyche that might make him more interesting to watch and certainly more appealing to root for. He’s not a hero, he’s not an anti-hero. He’s an accidental criminal with a guilt-complex.

Originally titled Things People Do, the film’s old title perfectly sums up the surface-level of complexity the film offers. However, the new title implies a level of depth it simply doesn’t deliver. Klein proves he can handle the behind the camera elements of filmmaking and the editing room to boot, but he might try his hand at someone else’s writing next time if he wants the attention he deserves.

After the Fall opens in limited release and on VOD Dec. 12.

In Jim Mickle’s chameleonic noir thriller Cold in July, an adaptation of the cult novel by Joe R. Lansdale, Michael C. Hall takes perhaps the most drastic departure in his career, playing Richard Dane, a timid, unremarkable picture frame store owner who accidentally shoots a burglar in his small-town Texas home in the film’s wonderfully edited, punchy opening. The gutless Richard, shaken by the consequences of his twitchy trigger finger, is soon plunged head-first into a world of old-school cowboy badasses and gunfights when Russel, (a gruff Sam Shepard) the father of the slain home invader, seeks revenge on Richard and his family. The strength of Mickle’s film is that, once you feel like you know exactly where it’s going, it takes an unexpected turn and becomes almost a new kind of film entirely. The film’s weakness is that the varied forms it inhabits feel largely derivative, not elevated enough to free themselves from the norm.

At first, Richard and his wife (Vinessa Shaw) and son are terrorized by Russel, with the creepy ex-con picking up where his son left off, invading the Dane home, more as an act of intimidation than stealing. Mickle is gifted at squeezing every bit of intensity and terror out of classic stalker scenes, and these early sequences are truly gripping. He relishes in playing with genre conventions, mining the work of Romero most notably, though less so than his Zombie thriller, Stake Land. Pulpy ’70s flicks inform Cold in July‘s style throughout, with grisly flashes of violence punctuating Mickle’s methodical approach to action. (An exception is the film’s climax, a nighttime shootout that falls apart quickly and finishes of the film with an ugly thud.)

Hall, wearing a gloriously ’80s mullet, is fantastic as Richard, a meek man forced to become a tough-guy overnight. Helping him along on his road to becoming a true badass is Don Johnson, playing a karate-kicking private eye who gives the film a welcome dose of bravado. The relationship between Richard and Russel goes to unexpected places I won’t spoil here, but I will say that Hall and Shepard have a quiet chemistry that stretches them both as actors. Shaw, however, is regrettably invisible, adding little to the emotional core of the story, despite her character’s positioning in the plot being ripe for powerful scenes of heartache and fear. Those scenes never come.

Richard’s arc is fascinating on paper; he’s faced with the responsibility of being an alpha male for the sake of protecting his family. In that gunshot flash that opens the movie, he sends himself down a path he’d never had the desire to go down, and yet, he must man up or perish. What sullies the emotional impact of his story are the later acts, whose blood-splattering violence is so arresting and dizzying you forget the subtle details of what brought our hero there in the first place. Everything devolves into midnight movie craziness, and while it doesn’t erase how involving the first two thirds of the film are, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. There’s a powerful theme of fatherly duty swimming around in the buckets of blood, but it in the end it all but drowns.

Cold in July trailer

Come Out and Play is a vicious and methodical new horror film by a mysterious new film director who only goes by the name of Makinov. This film is an update of Who Can Kill a Child?, the 1976 film that some horror aficionados call one of the best Spanish horror thrillers ever made. While the film isn’t a home run, there is a lot to admire here.

The film starts with a couple, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Vinessa Shaw, who are getting in one last vacation in Mexico before they welcome their first child. While speaking to a local, Francis finds out about a small island that is nearby that is not well traveled among tourists. He runs back to the hotel where his sick (and very pregnant) wife to tell her what he has discovered.

The film spends little time getting the couple to the island. Once there they find out that things are not what they seem. At first the couple seems to be alone. Come Out and Play features plenty of great eerie shots of Francis and Beth walking around in the desolate village. Soon they find out that they are not alone and will end up having to fight for their lives.

The island turns out to be populated with kids that are killing off all the adults. Come Out and Play then turns into a savage tale of survival. While the film doesn’t really explain why the kids are obsessed with killing all of the adults, one scene seems to point to some kind of curse that hangs over the kids.

What Come Out and Play excels at is its setting and mood which ends up being the best part about the film. Makinov nails the mood with a fantastic sound design that is mixed with a great atmospheric score that would leave John Carpenter and a host of other synth led horror maestros from the 70’s more than pleased.

With these two powerful aesthetics underlining Makinov’s overall plot, Come Out and Play just about succeeds with flying colors. There are, however, some issues the film has that almost undercut everything the film works towards. For one, the idea of two grown adults being afraid of a pack of kids seemed a little silly. Second off, some of the plot twists that happen near the end also came off as humorous.

While at first these issues were quite bothersome to me, I let the film digest for a while. It occurred to me that the film comes off as a nice little love letter written to the violent, penetrating horror films of the 1970’s and couldn’t help but think that they were meant to be a little cheesy. While forgiveness is not on the table for some of these setbacks, I can’t completely disregard what does work with the film. And to me, everything that works easily outweighs everything that doesn’t.