Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the Toronto International Film Festival.
Director Jeremy Saulnier specializes in dragging his characters out of their worlds and leaving them out of their depths. Over the course of his three previous films — Murder Party, Blue Ruin, and Green Room — he’s developed a reputation for intense stories punctuated with startling violence, but none of the intensity would be possible and none of the violence would be meaningful if he weren’t so focused on stories about people who are ill-equipped to handle either. In Murder Party, a lonely man follows up on a Halloween party invitation and discovers...
