A man kills the one person who has helped in and takes his place as the preacher to a small community of immigrants. As the local police searches for a killer, his conscience starts acting up.
Written by Scott Teems and Andrew Brotzman, based on the novel by Damon Galgut, and directed by Teems, The Quarry takes the subjects of conscience, what faith can mean, and how far a person will go to save themselves and makes a story with some strong character developments for some of the characters. That being said, the film takes its sweet time to get to its conclusions and suffers a bit from that. With the action being slow in most parts of the film and super slow in the other, the run time feels bloated at times and it all works against the power of the story and its content. The film doesn’t necessarily need to be full of action, but some of the scenes take a very long time to develop and advance, leaving the viewer feeling like it’s taking forever. This is quite unfortunate as there is a good skeleton to this film and it’s acted beautifully.
The cast here does fantastic work, especially lead Shea Whigham and his counterpart Michael Shannon. Both of these actors give fantastic performances like they are known for. Here they have a lot of time on screen to give their character depth and they do so with nuance and small variations that are just perfect for selling these two men and their story to the viewer. They are hindered by a script that fells like it doesn’t move, but the two of them give fantastic enough performances to keep the viewer watching. The two of them are the main attraction here with the rest of the cast doing well also, but they are the main reason to really watch this film.
The film’s atmosphere and look are on point for small town USA without much money, something that may seem easy to do, but can easily be overdone. The production design by Erin Magill with the set décor by Bradford Johnson, and costume by Annell Brodeur give the film a look that works perfectly with the story and its setting. The work here shows talent and knowledge of how to set a scene and characters so that they can fit together, give off the right vibe, and create a cohesive world for the story to evolve into.
The Quarry is a film with so much potential and some truly great performance; it unfortunately suffers from feeling way too long and thus losing the viewer a few times along the way. Any film that makes the viewer check their phone (or watch) a few times along the way is not doing its work completely. The film’s subjects and the cast alone should be enough to keep the attention, but they are not. Something feels like it’s missing or perhaps there’s too much empty space and scenes that do not feel like they have much use. Having not read the book, it’s not possible to compare and see if the issues with the film came from the original story.
On VOD April 17th.