shirogitsune-54786

If you know San Francisco, if you know Chinatown, particularly if you know and love Noir and Westerns then you will love Billy Bob's directorial effort here. I lived in San Francisco for years and many times went to high powered meetings on Montgomery Street, walked and dined on Nob Hill, wandered through the fog after midnight on Russian Hill or Pacific Heights, where you feel overwhelmingly that absolutely anything could be ahead in the fog. If you don't know the genre or the places, you won't catch the nuance but to those who do, this episode was pure genius. Don't try to fit this into pre-ordained, stereotypical boxes. Just watch and let the meaning of it all unfold on its own.

This is a very clever film which slowly draws you in to an increasingly complex midnight mystery. What starts out as an apparently simple case of a young Amish girl lost in the woods, possibly fleeing something or someone, winds through layer after layer of suspense where initial mis-steps or phrases mis-spoken are actually keys to unlocking a deeper mystery of time and space. This one is like a set of Matrioska dolls, a puzzle inside of a riddle inside of an enigma. The further you go, the deeper the mystery gets. What you thought you were watching turns out not to be the mystery or the problem at all. Rebekah Kennedy is wonderful as the lost Amish girl and the story just sucks you in. If you liked Coherence, Primer or Triangle then you'll love this one.

It helps if you know California self-help cults, especially Scientology and the like. It also helps if you are familiar with Fran Kranz' other work. If you know these things and have a decent attention span then this is a very enjoyable movie. I wouldn't quite call it a thriller, although it does have elements of suspense. It has some elements which are reminiscent of Michael Douglas' film "The Game' but not nearly as lengthy, detailed nor as violent. So in that sense I wouldn't call it derivative (which some reviewers seem to suggest). There were aspects of the film which could have been fleshed out more, and I definitely would have liked to see more of Nicky Whelan, but overall this was well worth watching.