Whenever someone needs some kind of justification for the importance of independent cinema, I normally point them towards Blow the Man Down. A small, intimate production made with a small budget and not featuring any major stars, and telling a truly insidious story about murder and deception in a small New England town, the film is a polarizing one in theory – but yet, it uses its concepts well, pulling together various ideas that are either executed in a familiar way, or subverted to the point of challenging the audience to expand their thinking beyond what we are used to seeing. Telling the story of two young women who are essentially rendered orphans after their mother dies, and forced into a position of financial despair as a result of her death, the film takes us on a journey that veers into several unexpected directions. Directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy (in their feature-length directorial debut), the film is a strange but compelling dark comedy that has many bizarre twists and turns, but still manages to be a consistently strong, fascinating effort from two exceptionally gifted young directors that define the spirit of independence, their nuanced approach to taking a genre that is so often predictable, and adding an element of surprise to nearly every frame. It’s a wonderfully well-crafted, intriguing film with a strong premise and a meaningful execution, which only leads to a more thorough, detailed film that challenges conventions in a way that only those working from a place of profound artistic integrity could achieve.

Classifying this film is a uniformly difficult task, because the directors seem to be drawing from numerous sources in how they construct the story. It’s not quite a murder mystery, but rather a film that has a murder as one of the central events (although not the most prominent – there are many different layers to the film that one should experience firsthand, so I’ll not spoil them here), and where the mysteries are more associated with exploring the world Cole and Krudy create in this quaint town on the coastline of Maine. It’s primarily a thriller, with the broad overtures of humour giving it a comedically nihilistic tone – it almost borders on surreal in some moments, including the recurring motif of the sea shanty “Blow the Man Down”, which has never been more unsettling than when it appears in the film (being an example of how a well-placed piece of music can change the entire experience of watching a film) – and its use of some stark themes in contrast with a wickedly funny script that both satirizes and pays homage to the sense of close-knit camaraderie that exists in these picturesque seaside hamlets and the people who occupy them. It has a sense of mystique to it that is almost impossible to describe – the muted colours conceal an abundance of eccentricity, and speak to the central theme of not believing all you see, since there is always a deeper meaning to everything that surrounds us, with even the most plausible and straightforward of scenarios having the potential to be much dark and more foreboding than we’d normally expect – and it’s all done under the guise of a seemingly simple story of friendship, with has some extraordinarily dark turns scattered throughout it.

Part of the appeal of Blow the Man Down comes in the fact that it is built on the talents of its actors, rather than simply their presence. There’s a tendency for modern independent films to cast major names, but rarely giving them much to do outside of simply going through the motions. This film consists of a blend of relative newcomers and seasoned veterans. Morgan Saylor and Sophie Lowe are categorized as the former (not in terms of this being their debut performance, but rather more prominent roles), and both are exceptionally gifted young actors who lead the film with a combination of steadfast grit and outrageous humour. They’re both excellent, and they carry the film almost entirely on their shoulders, being the people whose journey we are most invested in, and the ones we are hoping will ultimately succeed. However, the film also makes great use of its supporting cast, which includes a few more familiar faces – June Squibb, Annette O’Toole and Margo Martindale are the epitomai of reliable – they’re not often cast in major roles, but whenever they’re on screen (regardless of the project), they steal every scene. Blow the Man Down is one of those great independent films that serves as a vehicle for character actors, and while we do enjoy the work done by the leads, its the supporting cast that steals the film – Martindale in particular is absolutely brilliant, giving perhaps the performance of her career as the maniacal, scheming Enid (which is comparable to her breakout role in Justified). There’s a certain quality about her that just lends her to playing effective villains – her infectious Southern charm and ability to riff off her maternal persona makes her capable of terrifying characterization. Blow the Man Down serves all of its actors so well, and it’s difficult to find a fault in any of them, which is one of the reasons the film seems so flawless on a character-based level.

There are many works of literature that use the tranquillity of the Atlantic Seaboard as a means to critically comment on a range of deeper themes, usually contrasting the small-town charms with darker material (Stephen King has used almost his entire oeuvre to create a particular image of his native Maine, for example), and while Blow the Man Down doesn’t necessarily offer anything we have not encountered before in similar stories, there’s something so peculiar about how Cole and Krudy create a very distinct image of not only this region, but also the people who inhabit it, and use it as a foundation for this outrageously funny but deeply disturbing glimpse into the lives of these individuals and their sense of community, which is effectively deconstructed by the directors. It’s one of the rare mystery films that is almost entirely propelled by female characters – there are a few men, but they’re shown to be only marginal to the story, either being the victim of the murder that sets off the film, or the source of the red herrings that populate the film (the fact that the film focuses on a fishing community only makes the use of the term more intentional) – but even them, referring to this as a feminist reconfiguration of a classic mystery film seems like it is trivializing what is in fact a much more complex film than can be labelled under such brief and restricting terms. Blow the Man Down is an exceptionally complex film, and there’s an element of surprise in every frame of the film, precisely because everything seems so unexpected. Both the heroes and villains of the story are not the people we’d expect, and while we may be taken aback by the stilted tone and bleak storyline, we soon become acclimated to the overall experience, which we soon learn is much darker and far more bleak than a cursory glance would lead us to believe.

Blow the Man Down is a film with many tremendous ideas, and the right set of skills to execute them with precision and elegance, which is not particularly common when it comes to more abstract works. The film grounds itself within a recognizable reality, but is not restricted to it by any means – instead, it allows itself to have a few flights of fancy, making use of a measured kind of ambiguity that contributes to the general sense of mystery, rather than outright replacing it. By the end of the film, we have several questions, and while some of them are answered (albeit in a roundabout way that is about as direct as the rest of the supposed resolutions), the rest are left up to our own interpretation, a risky but worthwhile approach that only makes us more engaged with the film and its range of complex ideas. The interweaving of a series of different themes makes Blow the Man Down one of the most intriguing films of the last decade, and its caustic humour, refusal towards sentimentality (which is interesting, considering the storyline is mainly about two sisters navigating the process of grief after the death of their mother) and forthright dedication to a range of very bold ideas makes it a much more enduring film that some may expect. This is a film that is likely going to be seen as influential in later decades, specifically due to its ability to plumb the emotional depths of a seemingly simple story, keeping the audience guessing, but not leaving us unsatisfied. It’s a remarkable film, and one of the best comedies of recent years, a darkly satirical jab at society and its tendency towards a specific kind of decorum, which can sometimes be a lot more terrifying than any fiction.