The marketing – poster, trailer and the like – for this monochrome low-budget feature is selling The Righteous like it’s a horror film. It’s all dark figures lurking in the murk, ominous, droning synth music and lots of talk of sin, suggesting it issues from the horror subgenre that’s soaked in a Catholic mindset: God v Satan, crime and punishment and, aptly given the cinematography here, black and white morality. But while this feature debut for writer-director-co-star Mark O’Brien is certainly suffused with uncanny dread, it’s much more thoughtful and meditative than it is scary, and barely supernatural until the end. This slipperiness really works in the film’s favour, and suggests that O’Brien, who also gives a tremendous performance here (he’s been in scads of stuff as a character actor, from Marriage Story to Halt and Catch Fire), has proper, big boy directing talent.
The lean, near-stagebound story revolves around just a handful of characters. In the middle of Nowheresville USA, Frederic (Henry Czerny) and his wife Ethel (Mimi Kuzyk, like O’Brien and Czerny a familiar face finally getting a bit of limelight here) are grieving for their young adopted daughter Joanie, recently killed in mysterious circumstances. Their despair is so great they can barely fill us in on the backstory, but through hints and mentions we learn that Frederic was once a priest who left the clergy to be with Ethel, and that Joanie’s birth mother was a flighty local woman named Doris (Kate Corbett). One night, a strange young man with a southern drawl named Aaron (O’Brien) comes seeking help for his injured ankle, so Frederic and Ethel do the decent Christian thing and offer him help and a place to stay the night. But it’s soon apparent that something is really off about him, even though he does have a way with words and tells mesmerising stories about his miserable childhood.
Sure, this is a talky movie, big on debates and low on action, and may feel somewhat theatrical – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially when the performances are this subtle, expressive and electric. Cinematographer Scott McClellan lights the faces beautifully and has a special knack for capturing the glittery reflection of lamps in eyes, like the flicker of a soul before it’s crushed.
• The Righteous is available on 10 June on Arrow.
