RUST CREEK: A Tense, Effectively Executed Survival Thriller

Rust Creek is a survival thriller directed by Jen McGowan, based on an original story by Stu Pollard . The film stars Hermione Corfield as Sawyer, a college senior who takes a wrong turn on a long drive to a job interview and ends up injured and stranded, tracked by two pursuers in rural Kentucky. Along the way she is forced to work with mysterious loner Lowell (Jay Paulson) in order to survive.

Sawyer is at the emotional core of what is a largely character-driven thriller, and Corfield is successful in every variation of Sawyer’s emotional state; she is at times cold and calculating, at others terrified and vulnerable, brutal in her resilience, sarcastic and charming. She communicates a great deal with expressions and in the physical acting required to relay with consistency a stab wound Sawyer sustains early on. Her vocal performance – a husky Southern accent, impressive from English Corfield – is yet another dimension of her strong performance.

Although the depiction of the local police department’s search for Sawyer is largely bland, Sawyer as a character justifies the slow pace and lack of action. Rust Creek is a thriller that confronts not only the inherent horror of Sawyer’s isolation, physical vulnerability, and her struggle to survive in the wilderness, but larger themes of moral apathy, complicity, and abuse of power.

“You want to try your luck out in them woods?”

What Sawyer endures is inseparable from her womanhood, and Rust Creek successfully builds much of its tension around Sawyer’s existence as a woman in society; she must constantly calculate her level of safety, strategize around her physical disadvantages, leverage her perceived helplessness, and acknowledge the unique dangers that exist against her as a woman. There is no sexual violence at any point in the film, for example, but the threat of sexual violence exists every scene, creating fear not only in the viewer, but seemingly in Sawyer as well. Rust Creek both acknowledges Sawyer’s capabilities as an independent and capable young woman and acknowledges the terrifying reality that she is overpowered; socially and physically.

When Sawyer encounters Hollister (Micah Hauptman ) and his brother Buck (Daniel R. Hill) when she stops to consult her map, she is immediately on guard. They are two large men on a secluded road, and she is a young woman on her own; this setup alone is effective in the sense of vulnerability it creates. As so many woman do when they find themselves in dangerous situations, she tries to talk her way out of their conversation, edging toward her car to escape. She is ultimately forced to fight physically, and is outmatched and outnumbered, stabbed in the leg, and must retreat from her vehicle into nearby woods. She rips off the French-tipped acrylic nails she had applied for her interview, tends to her wounds, and carries on.

She is, subsequently, wary of building any partnership with Lowell ( Jay Paulson ), the burn-scarred meth manufacturer who rescues her after she collapses in the woods. He is the mistreated cousin of Buck and Hollister, and ultimately sides with Sawyer against her pursuers. Lowell and Sawyer’s unlikely partnership takes up a large part of the second half of the film, and thankfully Paulson’s performance is strong as the initially unfriendly but deceptively sensitive Lowell, as is his repartee with Corfield, and he makes what on paper looks like a reprehensible human being into a sympathetic and complicated man.

“You’re five miles from the nearest road.”

Hollister and Buck are one-note as antagonists with somewhat cloudy motivations for pursuing Sawyer, but are fairly effective nonetheless. They are meth dealers with tracking skills, men with no sense of morality or empathy who are first and foremost concerned with their own financial gain and avoidance of legal consequences. Everything they do from tracking Sawyer to presiding over Lowell’s meth manufacturing, they do with smiles on their faces; they view themselves as immune to consequences and behave as such. We ultimately find that their confidence is not unfounded; they have an ally in the local police department who is willing to go to great lengths to hide his involvement with Hollister and Buck’s meth business.

While the segments of the film that focus on the police department’s search for Sawyer are mostly unremarkable, the presence of a corrupt police officer adds some interest and creates a more impactful story, and links a smaller story to larger social issues. In a effective and quietly horrifying twist, we find that there are authorities that have allowed these men to operate without hindrance, and the fact that they are free to stalk and harm Sawyer is directly the fault of grown men’s complicity. There is no safe haven to be found in the police department – Sawyer is almost universally alone. Rust Creek focuses not only on subverting genre tropes regarding who is safe and who is unsafe, but also the tragedy that results when people abandon their moral code.

Rust Creek: Conclusion

Rust Creek is well-executed on all fronts, anchored by a strong performance from Hermione Corfield. The cinematography, writing, and performances are all in service to a harrowing story of the brutality that the world demands of a young woman simply trying to exist and build her future. Rust Creek, in addition to its success as a thriller, also has a strong emotional core in its consistent admonishment of amorality and apathy, a deceptively layered thriller that touches upon the inherent horror in being a woman.

Is your assessment of the success of a thriller or horror film determined first and foremost by your level of fear throughout, or are you more concerned with other elements?

Rust Creek was released in the United States on January 4, 2019.