Blue Ruin Is Astonishingly Absorbing

At the start of the 2010s, crowdfunding through websites like Kickstarter really broke through as a way to get films financed without relying on the money of corporations that could creatively stifle the production. The ideal use of this financing source would be to get off-kilter original indie movies like Jeremy Saulnier's Blue Ruin made, though the biggest of the films benefiting from crowdsourcing were extensions of already-existing franchises like Veronica Mars: The Movie and Super Troopers 2. As the decade comes to a close, it feels like the bloom is off the crowdsourcing rose thanks to a whole bunch of controversial Kickstarter campaigns that have diluted the reputation of the idea of crowdsourcing a movie. At least we'll always have Blue Ruin!


Blue Ruin, the second directorial effort from Jeremy Saulnier, is not a movie heavy on dialogue. The heavily visual tendencies of Saulnier seen in subsequent projects like Green Room (yay!) or Hold the Dark (meh) are ramped up to eleven here as our protagonist, Dwight Evans (Macon Blair), prepares for a grisly revenge mission on the recently freed man who killed his parents all while rarely saying a word. Dialogue from supporting characters is kept to a minimum as Dwight goes about his plans for vengeance like a bloodthirsty and traumatized Harold Lloyd. Opting to rely almost exclusively on visual storytelling is one of a number of brilliant strokes in Saulnier's screenplay, another of which is Dwight actually managing to kill this guy before the half-hour mark is reached.

Here, Blue Ruin's story takes a turn into the land of exploring how these kind of quests for grisly revenge are never as tidy as something like Death Wish may make it seem. Killing this one guy only leads Dwight into even more trouble as the man's family prepares to exact their own revenge on Dwight that includes targeting Dwight's sister and her kids. The ripple effects of Dwight's vengeance just keep on going and going, there's never an easy way out for this guy. Depicting the realistic consequences of Dwight's burst of vengeful violence results in a plot that constantly generates riveting suspense. One is never fully sure what new complications will emerge for Dwight, but you can be darn sure Blue Ruin always has some kind of fascinating new wrinkle to incorporate into the proceedings.

It's a brilliantly executed story, one so well-written that even a single conversation between characters, especially an extended conversation between Dwight and a man he's held captive in the trunk of his car, can be as relentlessly of an edge-of-your-seat experience high-voltage shootout. Much like with how it communicates character motivations successfully even while frequently eschewing conventional verbal communication, Blue Ruin gets a whole lot out of minimal means. The direction and cinematography of Jeremy Saulnier are similarly impeccably-crafted. Saulnier's work in both of these departments occasionally echoed the visuals seen in another realistically messy crime thriller, Joel and Ethan Coen's Blood Simple, particularly in how colorful shades of exterior light (from sources like the neon signs in Blood Simple and in bug-zappers in Blue Ruin) are bathed on the mournful troubled characters during nighttime sequences.

Evoking Blood Simple will never be a critique as far as I'm concerned, though, thankfully, Blue Ruin's visuals deftly mix influences of the past with its own distinct visual aesthetic. This is particularly true in regards to how and when it uses prolonged single takes to accentuate the tension in certain sequences. Just look at how one of these extended single takes is used during a climactic shootout to follow the youngest member of the family (a teenage boy named William) tracking down Dwight. This particular shot just totally absorbed my eyeballs, especially during the playful touch where Saulnier's camera briefly pans over the wall of a hallway and loses focus of William.

I practically screamed out "Where'd the kid go?!?" in this quiet moment of tension, a true testament to how well Saulnier's camerawork had gotten me immersed in the scene at hand. The lead performance from Macon Blair (a dead-ringer for Joe Lo Truglio if there ever was one) is similarly top-notch, Blair's ability to deliver a haunting performance that conveys years of internal emotional turmoil just on a physical level is a perfect fit for this predominately dialogue-free role. His work as an actor here, just like the camerawork and writing of Blue Ruin, will certainly linger with a viewer long after the credits wrap on this revenge thriller like no other.