Smerdyakoff

For starters, this is not a horror or as some claimed a suburb bashing movie either, I barely noticed the lead actress Azura Skye before this movie, but this is her movie. She delivered an Oscar worthy performance as a harried housewife who is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She seems to have a pretty good life except the people around here treat her like dirt as she fulfills 4 roles as a literature teacher, housekeeper, wife and mother. She seems to shine in those roles but she is lying to herself and others about her feelings . But we are informed through her nervous uptight behavior that she is having problems sleeping and her POV, the whole movie is based on her POV, is suspect. She is already on some sorts of unknown psychiatric meds. But then mice invade her well kept home and her nasty but popular deadbeat druggy sister returns as a ward of her parents after another stint in drug rehab. Of course her outgoing friendly pretty sister is the life of the room while she is a downer. She also needles Holly about their still festering sibling rivalry from 30 years ago.

Her kids are ungrateful demanding brats who order her around as a servant and never even utter a hello. 'are you ok' or a "thank you". Actually his equally over stressed husband treats her better but he may or may not be having a fling at work, since Holly's might be dreaming or misinterpreting things. There is also a messed up conjugal sex scene with her drunk husband near the end where she winces in agony out of sight of him, crying out in existential pain if it ever gets better, Holly's nemesis of a sister Claudia and he seem to get along well enough, fueling her paranoia and anger even more. The titular "The Swerve" is about an accident she may nor may not have caused where a car with 2 obnoxious rowdy kids went off the road killing both. That happened after she stalked out of her parent's house and drove away after a spat with the aforementioned Claudia at dinner, leaving her 2 brat kids to ride home with dad.

Then there is her admiring student Paul who is also a part time check-out clerk at her husband's supermarket. At first she confiscates Paul's sketch book which has racy drawings of her and him, sends him to the office then later she relents. Later on at school then at a bowling alley they both have some really messed up sex, fueled by her fears of her husband straying. Each scene in the movie she looks more stressed and harried while the principals in her life don't notice. The movie reaches its inevitable climax which is what caused some people to call it a horror film, but aside from some blood is not a gore fest.

This is the sort of movie that has intellectual study, of you guessed it, class in America bent to it. The writer is definitely intelligent, but not intelligent enough to avoid writing a lame pointless movie. There was a constant voice over by Sammy narrating his awful life and how crappy society is to people like him, Julia Garner did the same grossed out dirty look throwing smart but white trash as Jamalee Merridew, the same act she did all through the 4 seasons of Ozark which came after this movie, so she wasn't typecasted in that role when they filmed this movie. Jake Weary plays the main character drifter jail bug Sammy and he did the best job. By then he was already doing Animal Kingdom as Deran, the gay thoughtful crime family brother who bought a bar. Ok we get it, being poor and in and out of jail in some rural Canadian mountain town pretending to be Oklahoma is a bad deal. But playing stupid games like breaking into nicer homes with her gay brother Jason just to pretend to be rich is even dumber. That is how the siblings met Sammy, whom they then invited home to be part of their "gang".

They all make bad decisions like smoke all the time and not even bothering to shut the screen doors on Jam's run down trailer. Or break glass bowls on the kitchen floor when barefoot.

Things come to a head when Jam tries to get a job as a waitress at the country club only to be thrown out by the guards there. Obviously she wasn't the right fit for the local hick town high society because she lives in Venus Hollow where all the white trash lives. While we never saw her interview, this created a fight outside as Sammy stood up for Jamalee by punching out a guard only to be beaten down by a broom wielding janitor. Why the club couldn't interview her then later turn her down was supposed to signify how awful these people are I guess. This then created an act of retaliation on the part of the siblings and Sammy who kidnap some pigs at night and get them to root up some greens at the bad old country club then drive around in golf carts having a grand old time.

Then things take a turn for the worse as her gay brother Jason first turns up missing then found dead in a pond under very suspicious circumstances. It was established he was murdered for what, some minor vandalism, and the local cop who had a tense relationship with the family. Did I forget to tell you that Jam and Jason's mom Bev was the town prostitute who took a fancy to Sammy too? The cop offered them some "blood money" and then the narrative degenerated into a stupid conclusion that really wasn't a conclusion. Obviously it was meant to signify the pointlessness of their lives or something, or the viewers who stuck with it.

The three punks convicted for the murder led by Damian Echols were guilty AF. Okay there was some hell and brimstone preacher who railed at these juvenile devil wannabees and the police work wasn't up to Law and Order standards, but never was even one bit of exonerating evidence uncovered. Also, after almost 3 decades and millions raised to free these punks and thousands of rich people or people with time on their hands, why haven't the "real" killers been found? This is just like the losers in Atlanta who still think some sinister blanche plot based on some whacked out jail snitch's tale, and not convicted serial killer Wayne Williams wasn't the Child Killer of the early 80. Hollywood needs to stick to fiction and I like Atom Ergoyan in general. So I am not doing this review out of spite.