rust creek movie review

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Rust Creek Is a Thriller With a Surprising Streak of Humanism

In Jen McGowan’s Rust Creek , Hermione Corfield plays Sawyer, a college senior en route to an important job interview in D.C. whose GPS sends her straight into the path of a pair of scuzzy, meth-pushing gits in the backwoods of Kentucky. Smarmy Hollister (Micah Hauptman) and big, beefy Buck (Daniel R. Hill) don’t take her refusal to come and party with them gracefully, and soon she’s scrabbling through the denuded late-November landscape with a deep knife wound in her thigh as the chill deepens and darkness closes in. If you’ve seen enough modern woman-in-peril thrillers, you know to brace yourself for the worst-case scenario. But Rust Creek lets you exhale just a bit. It’s tight without being punishing, and its humor takes you happily by surprise. In this sort of film, you’re on guard for pop-up scares and sudden spasms of gore, not for moments of blessed connection. The humanism feels positively radical.

From the start, it’s clear McGowan will be putting her heroine through hell while protecting her from degradation. It’s an important distinction in an era when even mainstream directors have edged into torture porn as if determined to flay the veneer of civilization off their characters — and their audiences. Corfield’s face never loses its thoughtfulness; you see the wheels turning in her head even when she’s in shock and near robotic. The actress gives Sawyer a witty detachment from what’s happening to her, as if Sawyer will need to live with all this a while — write or tweet about it, maybe — before she commits to a conclusion. Her refuge from her pursuers is a dilapidated stationary trailer in which crystal meth is cooked by a lanky redhead named Lowell, who may want to keep her as his prisoner. Jay Paulson, who plays him, is on a very fluid creepy-dreamboat border: His blue eyes can seem deep and intelligent until he shifts the angle of his head and they look fixed and vacant.

Paulson is best known for his brief run as the distraught younger brother of Dick Whitman (a.k.a. Don Draper) on Mad Men, and he and Corfield have a wonderful, barbed chemistry. (The bright script is by Julie Lipson.) When Lowell is more tight-lipped than Sawyer would like about the science of meth-making, she suggests he’s cooking it by rote — “like one of those European pop bands that sing in English but don’t actually know what any of the lyrics mean.” Lowell doesn’t care for that simile and shows off his knowledge, and she responds as if they’re in a college seminar and have a chance to enlarge each other’s worlds. Lowell has been deep in the woods in all senses; you can feel his pleasure at being able to talk to someone who doesn’t spend all day drinking and doping and plotting to undercut the Mexicans in the meth market. Later in the movie, he says to Sawyer that everyone we meet is like a chemical reaction, that we don’t know what the collision of our cells will bring.

There’s a lot of standard genre material in Rust Creek but with much of the rust scraped off. McGowan and the cinematographer, Michelle Lawler, use every inch of the wide frame, and the landscape, with its hills and twisted limbs, can look ominous or gentle depending on what’s going on. (When Sawyer says to Lowell that she could get used to “the quiet country life,” it seems as if the screenwriter is putting us on — except it is peaceful without those psychos around.) The mood teeter-totters. The county sheriff, O’Doyle (Sean O’Bryan), is a little too intimate with the bad guys for comfort (Lowell calls him “the worst kind of snake there is. He don’t rattle before he bites”), so you don’t know who’ll end up saving Sawyer, except that it probably won’t be a man or someone not named Sawyer.

The violence in Rust Creek isn’t sadistically explicit, but it’s far more cruel than in many splatterfests because the characters aren’t disposable — they’re more authentic than the B-movie situations in which they find themselves. McGowan, Lipson, and the rest of their crew have made a terrific little exploitation movie that doesn’t feel exploitative in the least.

*This article appears in the January 7, 2019, issue of  New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

• movie review
• jen mcgowan
• new york magazine

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‘Rust Creek’ Review: A Woman Is Stranded in the Backwoods of Kentucky. What Could Go Wrong?

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

• Jan. 3, 2019

When horror movies head for the woods, their titles may vary — “I Spit on Your Grave,” “Wolf Creek” — but their central dynamic is too often the same: At some point, an attractively trembling woman will be forced to run like the dickens from a yokel who butchers his own meat.

What sets “Rust Creek” apart from most of its genre predecessors, though, is that its director, screenwriter and cinematographer are all women. Sadly (or happily, depending on your viewpoint), this hasn’t made an appreciable difference to the broadly familiar beats of Julie Lipson’s screenplay, even if Jen McGowan’s direction is as attentive to stasis as action. Midway through the movie, when the lead character, a Kentucky college student named Sawyer (Hermione Corfield), finds herself trapped in a trailer with Lowell (Jay Paulson), a hinky meth cook, her slow transition from suspicion to trust is accomplished with near-subliminal sensitivity.

The sequence, and the uneasy alliance it forges, is the most compelling feature of a plot that could easily have graced a couple of episodes of Graham Yost’s chewy 2010-2015 television series, “Justified” (also set in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky). When Sawyer is stranded on a side road en route to a job interview in D.C., the arrival of two gun-toting yahoos is no surprise. More unanticipated is Sawyer’s response to their twitchy offer of a bed for the night: Neutralizing both the skeevy Hollister (Micah Hauptman) and burly Buck (Daniel R. Hill), she legs it into the woods.

And that’s the first problem: Sawyer is so resourceful that we never fear for her. A gaping knife wound in her thigh fails to slow her roll until she’s out of immediate danger. Later, she devises an escape from bondage using lye and some barely credible contortions. Though slight of build, she’s a match for every lunk in her path, to the point where I fully expected her to show up at state Police Headquarters with her remaining adversaries trussed like turkeys.

Well-acted and technically sound (Michelle Lawler’s photography is clean and clear), “Rust Creek” falters with superficial characterizations and a cliché sheriff (Sean O’Bryan) who’s as incompetent as he’s crooked. Corfield is fine in a role that gives her little opportunity to do more than run and fight, but a woman this empowered removes the question mark from her survival — and the tension from the movie.

Rust Creek Rated R for a face full of lye, a zing of bullets and a meth-cooking demo. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes.

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‘Rust Creek’ Review: Enthralling Kidnapping Thriller Is Like a Feminist ‘Breaking Bad’

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It’s hard to choose a single moment that best exemplifies the hard-edged feminist lens at work in director Jen McGowan’s chilling “Rust Creek,” but the image of the teenage Sawyer (Hermione Corfield) gruffly ripping off her acrylic nails to scale a ditch is a top contender. It’s a move that might be perceived as funny in a more commercial genre film, but is entirely believable in McGowan’s understated and plausible nightmare — making it all the more chilling.

Intimate in scope to its great advantage, “Rust Creek” begins and ends with Sawyer’s journey, with a stable of male friends and foes providing color and intrigue. When she receives word of a job interview in Washington D.C., the soon-to-be college graduate hops in her red SUV and hits the road. Following her navigation app, Sawyer turns off the highway to avoid traffic, and quickly finds herself lost on the desolate back roads of rural Kentucky. When she mutters to herself, as if willing it to be true, “I can figure this out,” she is instantly recognizable to anyone who considers themselves capable of handling any situation.

When she pulls over to examine a paper map (how quaint!), two menacing locals attempt to abduct her. Sawyer manages to break free, but not before sustaining a bloody injury to the leg. Impressively fending off two men with a rigor that belies her small frame, she hurries off into the woods, abandoning her car on the side of the road. Interspersed with her increasingly desperate attempts to clean her wound, news of an abandoned vehicle reaches the local police station. Lest we be lulled into a false sense of impending relief, an eager rookie (Jeremy Glazer) is more concerned than the jaded Sheriff (Sean O’Bryan), who has a disturbing familiarity with Sawyer’s attackers.

After finally giving into thirst and exhaustion to collapse in the woods somewhere, Sawyer awakens to find herself in unfamiliar territory yet again: a dingy trailer. Having grown distrustful of strangers (with good reason), she immediately tries to escape before being knocked out. When she wakes up again, this time her hands are bound. Her captor is Lowell (Jay Paulson), a gaunt redhead who cooks meth. Though initially skeptical, she softens when Lowell hides her from her attackers, who are looking for her. Incidentally, they turn out to be not only his cousins, but the ones who distribute his product.

In many ways Sawyer’s situation is an apt metaphor for that uniquely small town sense of walls closing in, and the suspicion that one may never escape. Stuck in a dangerous business with his ne’er-do-well cousins, Lowell more directly embodies this predicament. As with that great odd couple, Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, Lowell teaches Sawyer the cook. Dumping the used chemicals into the river, she admonishes him: “Not very green.” Having been alone for so long, this shred of company awakens in him the long-dormant desire for something better.

Under McGowan’s restrained direction, “Rust Creek” is an impressive example of good storytelling overriding budget and star power. Moments like the nails coming off, or when Lowell douses himself in milk after getting hit with lye, hint at a wry sense of humor lurking beneath her capable genre chops. The movie is brilliantly cast — Paulson has that emaciated meth-dealer quality Christian Bale has to work for. Corfield, who boasts bit parts in popular franchises such as “Star Wars,” “Mission: Impossible,” and “xXx,” will have a long career. Like a young Jennifer Lawrence or Elizabeth Olsen, she has the whole girl-next-door-who-could-definitely-beat-you-up thing in the bag.

Written by Julie Lipson with story credit to producer Stu Pollard, the script does a lot with a little, even if it does veer into obvious metaphor territory. The austere minimalism of “Rust Creek” works to the movie’s advantage. After they finish the cook, Lowell tells Sawyer: “Everyone we meet is a chemical reaction. They change us and we change them.” It’s the first time two characters have had a substantial conversation, and even some brief cheesiness is a welcome respite from the chilling emptiness of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“Rust Creek” is playing in theaters now.

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If you’ve watched enough thrillers, you know that nothing good comes to city folk who wander into the backwoods. We’ve seen so many fish out of water horror over the years and the deep woods killer/rapist has become such a recognizable trope that it got the meta-horror treatment with Tucker and Dale vs. Evil , joining the ranks of zombie movies, slashers, vampires and the other horror staples so popular they spawn self-referential humor.

Which is all to say that when you start a movie and see an ambitious young city girl get lost in the woods, you feel like you’ve got a pretty strong sense of where this is all going to go. Fortunate then, that there are films like Rust Creek that surprise by leaning into the strengths of the backwoods thriller while subverting the predicted beats. Screenwriter Julie Lipson and director Jen McGowan aren’t as interested in putting their heroine through a graphic, exploitative wringer (though they indulge in the thrills of survivalism in the film’s familiar first act) as they are invested in the character drama of her survival.

Like many survival thrillers, Rust Creek follows a young college co-ed, Sawyer ( Hermione Corfield ) into a remote forest, where she gets lost on her way to an important job interview. One quick and violent encounter with two local yokels later — which demonstrates Sawyer is a hyper-competent, quick-thinking fighter — and Sawyer is running through the dense woods with a deep wound and no sense of direction.

I’ve been waiting to see a solid starring vehicle for Corfield since her memorable bit part in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, where she plays the ill-fated record shop attendant in the film’s opening minutes. Corfield made a lot of just a few moments on screen; charismatic, strong chemistry with her scene partner (Tom Cruise, no less), and one of those faces seemingly made for lighting up a screen. With Rust Creek she lives up to that promise, and McGowan wisely puts a lot of faith in Corfield’s hyper-expressive face to communicate without saying a word. Rust Creek is not a dialogue-driven film, especially in the action-driven first act, but Corfield’s telling micro-expressions keep us with her on every painful step of her journey.

As thrilling as the first act is (especially the initial confrontation, which doesn’t go quite the way anyone expects,) the film comes alive at the second act turn, when Sawyer gets rescued and/or arguably kidnapped by a mysterious recluse named Lowell (Jay Paulson) and their prickly, unconventional dynamic lights the film with a spark of unpredictability and old-fashioned soul. A meth cook with unexpected ties to Sawyer's plight, Lowell is an inscrutable fella first; patient and quiet with the peculiar kind of personality one develops as a hermit. You’re never quite sure where he’s coming from, and Paulson plays the balance beautifully, walking around like the human embodiment of a heavy sigh.

With leads as taciturn and Shrewd as Sawyer and Lowell, many of Rust Creek's most impressive character moments are hushed, understated affairs, which turns out to be both a strength and weakness.. The upside is the lovely, unforced connection that slowly blossoms between the characters, but the downside is that all the quiet and stillness causes the tension to lag — especially when the action turns to the film’s primary antagonist, a bumbling figure of small town corruption who’s as trite and predictable as the film’s leads are nuanced and surprising.

If Rust Creek seems to forget its a thriller for a bit, it remembers all at once when the film explodes into another sharp burst of kinetic violence to bring it home.  McGowan lulls you in to the loveliness of her characters and the buzzing electric energy of their unlikely alliance, But she’s also setting up an understated web of mystery and criminal intrigue that all comes crashing together in the film’s final act. The transitions between the highs and lows aren't always as smooth as you wish, and the tension flags at times, but by taking the time to breath life into these characters, Rust Creek makes a unique and worthwhile entry in the genre that puts a premium on heart and humanity over horror.