What sets “Rust Creek” apart from most of its genre predecessors, though, is that its director, screenwriter and cinematographer are all women. Sadly (or happily, depending on your viewpoint), this hasn’t made an appreciable difference to the broadly familiar beats of Julie Lipson’s screenplay, even if Jen McGowan’s direction is as attentive to stasis as action. Midway through the movie, when the lead character, a Kentucky college student named Sawyer (Hermione Corfield), finds herself trapped in a trailer with Lowell (Jay Paulson), a hinky meth cook, her slow transition from suspicion to trust is accomplished with near-subliminal sensitivity.
The sequence, and the uneasy alliance it forges, is the most compelling feature of a plot that could easily have graced a couple of episodes of Graham Yost’s chewy 2010-2015 television series, “Justified” (also set in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky). When Sawyer is stranded on a side road en route to a job interview in Washington, D.C., the arrival of two gun-toting yahoos is no surprise. More unanticipated is Sawyer’s response to their twitchy offer of a bed for the night: Neutralizing both the skeevy Hollister (Micah Hauptman) and burly Buck (Daniel R. Hill), she legs it into the woods.
And that’s the first problem: Sawyer is so resourceful that we never fear for her. A gaping knife wound in her thigh fails to slow her roll until she’s out of immediate danger. Later, she devises an escape from bondage using lye and some barely credible contortions. Though slight of build, she’s a match for every lunk in her path, to the point where I fully expected her to show up at state Police Headquarters with her remaining adversaries trussed like turkeys.
Well-acted and technically sound (Michelle Lawler’s photography is clean and clear), “Rust Creek” falters with superficial characterizations and a cliché sheriff (Sean O’Bryan) who’s as incompetent as he’s crooked. Corfield is fine in a role that gives her little opportunity to do more than run and fight, but a woman this empowered removes the question mark from her survival — and the tension from the movie.
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Rust Creek is rated R for a face full of lye, a zing of bullets and a meth-cooking demo. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.