Developed from a 2016 short, Matt Glass and Jordan Wayne Long’s post-US Civil War supernatural thriller isn’t just atmospheric and characterful, it’s an often shrewd allegory of the US self-image as the shining “city on a hill”. Thomas Hobson plays James McCune, a black doctor and war veteran nurturing physical and psychological wounds, who is summoned by his Uncle Matthew (Phil Morris) to a post in Norfolk, a walled town sequestered deep in the Ozark forest. When he arrives, he is shocked to encounter a biracial paradise where, as the preachy saloon murals have it, “To each their purpose”. But there are strict rules, imposed by Matthew, about venturing beyond the palisade where horned ghosts are apt to emerge from banks of red fog with a particular hunger for local troublemakers. As another mural counsels, “Honour your ghosts”.
There’s something almost Twin Peaksy about this idyll around which dark forces muster. The film gathers together a fruity gallery of oddballs, including David Arquette as a friendly amateur photographer and Tim Blake Nelson as the blind Scandinavian saloon owner (following up his O Brother, Where Art Thou? yodelling and his turn as the West Texas Tit in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, he gets a great musical number). Lingering among this motley lineup is a pleasure, bedded in by Long’s superb production design and Brianna Quick’s costumes, though, given the town’s supposed racial composition, it’s strange that the supporting cast isn’t more diverse.
