Blue Ruin is unwatchable, bloody – but, from what I saw, rather good

Blue Ruin is a low-budget yet highly accomplished revenge thriller although whether you have the stomach for it is another matter. I do not have a strong stomach, as we know, and as I braced myself for the next startlingly bloody burst of violence, having yet to recover from the last startlingly bloody burst of bloody violence, I was often just longing for it all to be over. I like excellent film-making as much as the next person but, ideally, I would also like to be able to watch it.

Stuff you don’t need to know but might like to: this has been a huge festival hit, winning several prizes, and much acclaim for its writer-director Jeremy Saulnier, who had previously only made corporate videos and one small feature (Murder Party). Also: it was shot in 30 days, and funded by a raid on his wife’s retirement fund, his credit card, and a last-minute Kickstarter campaign. And: it is so low-budget he used his parents’ house as one of the locations. Finally: Saulnier is obviously special, although why he can’t say it with flowers, or softly falling snow, I don’t know.

The ten-minute opening is virtually wordless and extremely special, an absolute masterclass in showing and not telling; in creating feeling while seemingly doing nothing. We simply watch a homeless man, with straggly hair and bushy beard, living somewhere along the Delaware shore, search through bins for food, steal into houses to have a wash, avoid people and sleep in his rusted, beat-up, old blue Pontiac; the ‘Blue Ruin’ of the title, I’m guessing. This is Dwight, as played with fantastic delicacy by Macon Blair, who infuses the character with such soulful longing, and such a sense of loss, we immediately find we are on his side, even though his side, it will turn out, is possibly no better than anyone else’s.

So he’s silently going about his business when he’s approached by a policewoman and asked to accompany her to the station, at which point the film puts its foot on the accelerator.