I haven’t seen a Mark Jenkin film before (Enys Men (2022), Bait (2019)) and so I wasn’t quite prepared for the lo-fi Bolex camera vibes of Rose of Nevada.

I suspect there will be a fair portion of the mainstream film-going public who are enticed by Callum Turner and George MacKay and aren’t expecting this rather metaphysical and dreamlike meditation.

We are in a Cornish fishing town that is dying. The post office is now a food bank, the local pub is empty. Young good bloke Nick (MacKay) has a wife and child and lives next door to the Richards. Mrs. Richards (Mary Woodvine who is also Jenkin’s partner and came up with the concept for the film) is prone to wandering around in bare feet, never the same since her son Luke disappeared on a fishing boat.

Liam (Turner) – or is it Alan – you’ll start to get confused between all of the generic four letter names – is new to town and is eager to be crew on the fishing boat Rose of Nevada that turns up unexpectedly. We know that there is something not quite right about this boat, as the businessman who finds it suddenly appearing ashore obviously knows that it has a dark history but sees a chance to make some money and reinvigorate the town. Also seemingly aware of this is Tina (Rosalind Eleazar), whose boyfriend and baby daddy was lost on that very same fishing boat 30 years earlier.

There is some time loop brain twists that unfold, and it is all done with a supersaturated and often static camera and evocative sound. The dialogue and framing is sometimes stilted, and we are pulled back-and-forth between moments, just like Nick, who suspects he is slowly going crazy.

Although its slow quiet provoked a tendency to nod off in the silent bits, I think I was really ready for something a bit different. If I’d watched it a bit earlier in the day, I might not have joined Nick in his nightmare of confusion quite so much.

I left feeling there was a subtle metaphor at play, about the slow death of tradition and community and a need for young people to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. A millennial nightmare perhaps, written by a gen-xer.