UWM Union Cinema

Seventeen years old and bold, Ryder (played by Logan Miller) wants to make a scene at his conservative family’s reunion and come out as gay-- the perfect way to do it, he thinks. His parents are super not into that, though, but he still tries show it through his amazing style choices (red short shorts, deep v-neck, and the sunglasses really complete the look). All it does is attract the attention of his young cousins who think he’s pretty rad. Most important is Molly (Ursula Parker) at 9 years old.

Things go south (or should I say Midwest?) when Ryder and Molly’s little bird nest in the barn adventure ends with her running out screaming with blood on her dress at just about the worst place possible. Thus Ryder is unspokenly accused of something seriously sinister. His uncle, Keith, initially acts out in rage but then interactions just turn weird afterwards. This is where it goes from worse goes to worst. Uncovered are family secrets kept buried for years, with performances so unsettling you have to see to believe. That is, if you can even understand what’s going on. 

May I pause to say the actor who plays Ryder was 23 when filming? Can he pass for 17? Yeah, I guess so, but only because films and tv shows have been forcing me to watch 26-year-olds play teens so now it’s just been normalized. Dislike. This movie is already pretty uncomfortable and the fact that this guy is 6 years older than what he’s playing is not helping in the slightest.

The best way to describe this movie would be completely dreadful. It’s filled with conflict after conflict as our protagonist is forced to face Keith and the rest of the family. Nothing is really fun anymore. It’s all a nightmare.

Visually, the movie is presented pretty straight-forward. Only in a few specific moments was I really dazzled by it’s visuals or cinematography. It’s real strong suites are the atmosphere it creates by the unnerving situations us viewers have to watch. It uncovers the taboo topics of young sexuality, and sexual abuse, and handles them well. And the best thing about this movie is it’s actors, most important young Parker’s performance, and Josh Hamilton as Uncle Keith who made me feel oh so very much like I wanted to leave.

At the same time, a place where it falls short is explaining why a character is doing what they’re doing. It’s not part of the mystery; sometimes even the eventual explanation of actions doesn’t seem satisfying. For example, why does the family even go to the reunion if they are already black sheep, and why do they stay? It’s revealed, eventually, but I just don’t find the reasons believable all the time.

Another short 90-minute film for you to quickly be traumatized and then move on. Perhaps not the best it could be, Take Me to the River is still interesting creation from a first-time filmmaker, Matt Sobel, and is more good than bad, to say the least. Three and a half out of five stars, probably. I’m very grateful this is not the family reunion I attended in Nebraska.

The film begins with bus driver (played by Amy Morton) doing her bus driver thing. You know she’s a Good One because she gives her hat to a child who was previously hat-less. Definitely no malicious intent from her. Where she goes wrong is at the end of her day she’s inspecting her bus and lets a bluebird frazzle her. Innocent enough expect once it has flown out again, she doesn’t continue on with the inspection and therefore never encounters little Owen chilling (literally, it’s the middle of January) in one of the seats. The next morning she is quite shocked to see his boot in her rear-view mirror and boom! her life is pretty much over.

Now Owen is in the hospital with severe hypothermia and a small chance of survival. And that causes a lot of issues for Owen’s family and the bus driver’s family, and everyone they interact with which is basically the whole town because not many people live in this Northern Maine town.

May I stop to interject that Bluebird was actually filmed in Maine. It’s just refreshing to see real snow in movies instead of that weird patchy fake snow, or worse, having no snow at all in an area that geographically should. Although, it still contains one of the fakest, saddest snowball fights I’ve ever seen. You win some you lose some.

The themes of blame and guilt are heavy, as the bus driver is completely emotionally destroyed by her accidental negligence. Someone not taking any of the blame is the boy’s own mother Marla (Louisa Krause) who forgot it was her night to pick up Owen from the bus stop instead of her mother. She probably has tons of other things to feel guilty about though, because her life is a disaster to the point you might wonder why she isn’t the star of Trainwreck instead.

Then on the other side of the same coin we have the theme of being there for someone. This is referenced several times, in Marla being pretty much absent in her son’s life, and paralleled in the bus driver’s own family, with her husband rarely being home for his daughter. Mainly, what I think it all boils down to is the theme of being hurt. The film can become overwhelming (sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way) in it’s emotion to the point I lost sight of what I was supposed to be getting out of it. I’m uncertain if that was intentional by the director.

Something I thought was always well-done in the the movie is the moments of pure raw emotion between the actors that it made me half to step back and realize, whoa, this is acting. Amy Morton and Louisa Krause both put on spectacular performances and are amazing leads. The other characters do a well enough job in their roles, but these two really went above and beyond for me.

The color scheme is fantastic at displaying the movie’s depressing nature. Forever dark and gray. Even if all the awful things never happened in this movie, by colors alone you would still feel the dullness of it. It’s wonderful to look at. And frame-wise, is like each still of the movie could be a beautiful photograph on it’s own. Very well put together.

The only place I feel this movie truly falls short is in it’s ending. It feels incomplete and offers no resolution like it was trying to. If they had gone for more of it’s “up in the air” kind of ending, I think it would have been better, but instead it’s somewhere in limbo, between being resolved and unresolved. If you can forgive it this one thing though, I don’t think it’s a movie-ruiner, perhaps a movie-dampener, but you can still enjoy the movie for what it is.

The movie’s pretty short, only 90 minutes, so if you’re in the need of some quick feels, here it is. It’s a mess, it truly is, but it’s a beautiful disaster. Three out of five stars from me.

The smaller the pond, the bigger the splash a stone makes. This is the case in a small town on the northern tip of Maine where a local school bus driver becomes distracted during her end of the day inspection. The ripple effects of her actions will leave the tranquility of the town broken, showing just how powerful a single mistake can be.