STREAM THIS: I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
Rating: 7.9/10
Ruth (Melanie Lynskey) is an introverted, world-weary nurse and the butt of some serious cosmic irony. When her home is robbed and justice isn’t served, she seeks sympathy from friends and acquaintances.
She doesn’t find any.
Attempting to escape, she drinks Coors Light and reads a series of fantasy books: The Elsewhere Saga. Ruth gushes over her immersion in the books with a friendly stranger at a dive bar (director Macon Blair), and for a single moment we believe she has found or could find happiness. Their flirtation ends abruptly as he spoils the identity of the series’ heroine, a move that leaves Ruth quiet and confused.
At home, Ruth catches a perp letting his dog shit and run. She snaps, berating him for his carelessness, and in doing so, finds her vigilante buddy cop — Tony (Elijah Wood), a born-again Christian with ninja stars, who we later learn is also reading The Elsewhere Saga.
This no-twist southern gothic shines in the small and procedural scenes — the child she babysits drawing Ruth riding a stegosaurus, Ruth making a plaster of paris footprint mold, Ruth trying to answer questions about anything for anyone (e.g. frantically explaining the Find My app to a dispatcher).
The tone is fresh, the action is thrilling and violent, but the overall effect is reduced by two big plot leaps: Ruth and Tony finding the bad guys almost immediately, and a disappointing time jump during the final chase. Too eager to resolve, this offbeat tale could’ve benefitted from a weirder ending, perhaps an abrupt cliffhanger (à la Aaron Katz’s masterful noir Cold Weather). One also wonders how the tension might’ve improved by not giving the flat antagonists so much screen time.
Still, the movie flies by at a longer-than-it feels 96 minutes, all of the (many) jokes land, and secret weapon Gary Anthony Williams is indispensable as too-old-for-this-shit detective William Bendix. And though Tony seems at times piped in from a quirkier movie, Lynskey and Wood alone are worth the price of admission, delivering characteristically unique, magnetic performances.
Watch on your friend’s mom’s Netflix, on a hot Tuesday night after a workout and a little too much pizza.
