Rose of Nevada

If you saw Mark Jenkin's "Enys Men" then you might have an idea what to expect in this similarly photographed and styled mystery. This time, it's a Cornish fishing boat called the "Rose of Nevada" which has a reputation mired in suspense that serves as the focal point. It requires a crew of three and those consist the enigmatic captain (Francis Magee), "Liam" (Callum Turner) and "Nick" (George MacKay). The latter needs the money after his attempt to fix the leaky kitchen roof left him and his family with a man-sized hole. The outgoing charmer "Liam" is something of a mysterious young man, too, with a provenance about which we can only guess and then there is their skipper who resists any of the shore based temptations even when they return with an hold full of fish. It's on their first return from sea that their stories starts to twist. "Nick" goes home and nothing is as he left it just days before. "Liam", too, comes back to an altogether different scenario too. What is occuring? Are they in some sort of time loop? Has disaster befallen the ship in some way before? Are any of these men really whom they appear to be? I did like the grainy 16mm filming here, and that goes some way to creating a sense of peril but the dearth of dialogue and the repetiveness of the scenes (just how many times did I need to see them gut a fish?) left me feeling I was paddling rather than swimming. I didn't really feel that any of the three leading characters were sufficiently developed or that the underlying premiss was delivered with enough potency. I just wasn't very enthralled here. MacKay has more of the play here, and does well enough as his frustration expands, but Turner doesn't really have enough to get his teeth into and so contributes only peripherally to what might have been quite a complex story had it been more substantial and detailed. It's has a creepiness to the production, but the writing leaves too little meat on the bones and I left just a bit underwhelmed.

Surreality is an intriguing premise in entertainment, and, when skillfully employed (generally in a sci-fi context), it can make for compelling viewing. But deft handling of the material involved is what makes all the difference, and that’s where this latest effort from writer-director Mark Jenkin doesn’t quite hit the mark. Life in a coastal fishing village in the UK’s Cornwall region hasn’t been what it once was for 30 years. Overfishing, coupled with the mysterious disappearance of the fishing boat Rose of Nevada, left local anglers without a resource to exploit, not to mention more than a little bit spooked. However, when the craft suddenly and inexplicably reappears in the harbor one day three decades later, the remaining residents of the now-rundown community are even more mystified. That’s especially true for the boat’s owner, Mike (Edward Rowe), and the widow of one of the missing crew members, Tina (Rosalind Eleazar). They wonder what to do now that the trawler has reappeared, but they ultimately decide to put the boat back into operation. Mike hires a crew of three, skipper Murgey (Francis Magee) and two down-on-their-luck mates looking to better their lives with new jobs, Nick (George MacKay) and Liam (Callum Turner). And, on their first voyage, they bring home a huge catch. But what surprises them when they return is that the village appears to be bustling with people and activity again – just as it was 30 years earlier (before Nick was even born). The reason for this is that it actually is 30 years earlier, and the crew members are viewed by the locals (including the past selves of individuals from their own time) as the crew of the boat when it went missing. It’s mind-boggling to the returnees, to be sure, prompting them (particularly Nick) to try and figure out what’s going on. In this sense, the story has very much the feel of an episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits but dressed up in what it likes to think of as slicker packaging. And I s...

This quietly surreal movie is very understated in its presentation. But in its DNA, you can find parts of "Triangle" as well as parts of "Ghost ship" and also "And When the Sky Was Opened", which is an episode of The Twilight Zone from the original series back in 1959. It is quiet and it is understated, but it is unsettling and engaging. I really like the portrayal of a normal person being put in such extraordinary circumstances and finding his place in the narrative of the world. I recommend this if you want to see something about causality and time, but you aren't a fan of the axe-wielding maniac in "Triangle", for instance.

Mark Jenkin’s The Rose of Nevada is full of things that look as if they ought to mean something. The dangerous bit is assuming they do.

A fishing boat reappears in a Cornish village decades after vanishing, heads back out to sea, and somehow brings its new crew into the past. One man gains the family he never had. Another loses the wife and child he desperately wants back. The strange thing is how little Jenkin treats any of this like a grand supernatural event. It just happens, and everyone has to work out what sort of life they have landed in.

That same quiet oddness is everywhere. On land, Jenkin’s 16mm images are almost unnervingly still: faces, hands, rusting bollards, knackered nets, empty buildings. At sea, everything starts moving. The camera pitches with the boat, bodies strain, hands grip, veins stand out. The tension is often in an arm or a clenched hand rather than somebody doing Serious Acting with their face.

Then there is Mogi, who barely seems to belong to ordinary time at all. He stays with the boat, appears to understand far more than he bothers explaining, and mostly seems interested in getting on with the fishing. And then there are the fish themselves. They spill from the nets conspicuously dead.

Budget problem? Possibly. Meaningful clue? Also possibly. But Jenkin leaves the camera on them long enough to make us suspicious, which is frankly all the encouragement FolknHell needs. Once you start wondering whether this is a repeat of something that has already happened, dead fish suddenly become rather more interesting than dead fish have any right to be.

That is where The Rose of Nevada really gets under the skin. The village itself is waiting for something to come back. Mike and Tina remain among the rust, empty pub and food bank as if the old community might somehow return. Then the impossible happens and the past does come back, except not neatly and certainly not fairly.

As folk horror, that works for us. The place matter...