'Scarlet Winter (2023)' is very rough around the edges, but it's ultimately a perfectly serviceable puzzle-box thriller. Although its non-linear nature isn't used to particularly interesting effect, the narrative keeps you relatively engaged for its duration and takes a number of fairly compelling turns as it heads towards its final act. One of its main problems is that it seemingly only gets properly going mere minutes before it ends, with its majority dedicated to what would be the setup for a more traditional entry in its genre. Furthermore, its drama isn't especially meaty or novel, falling into tropes seen time and time again without adding anything new to the conversation. I do enjoy the way that the protagonist is revealed to be more and more of an jerk as the affair proceeds, with his treatment of the women in his life being poor enough to slowly make you care less and less about his chances of navigating the dire situation his finds himself in when the picture opens. Although the acting isn't particularly great and the writing often leaves something to be desired (plenty of interactions feel like those you'd see between NPCs in an open-world videogame), there's still something successful to be found on occasion and none of the film's individual elements are ever bad enough to completely disinvest you from the story that's being told. Everything is just a little bit underwhelming, sure, and the overall experience doesn't really say anything, but it does what it needs to do to keep you watching and ultimately feels like it was just about worth your time. It may sound like I'm only affording the thing faint praise, but I genuinely do quite like it for what it is. It's clearly a product of passion, a low-budget effort undertaken for the love of the craft rather than the money that often comes as a result of it. I'm way less inclined to be harsh on this for being serviceable than I am to be harsh on something that cost $300 million dollars and isn't much better. It isn't great - in fact, it often isn't even good - but you can see the potential of (most of) the people involved and there's a handmade charm to the movie that makes it kind of endearing in its own way. It isn't an underseen gem or anything like that, but it's a lot better than a lot of its bargain-bin peers. For something very few people have ever heard of, it's decent enough. I do take issue with it coming up when you search for "best movies of 2025" online, though.
