Director: Elliot Lester
Script: Chris Kelley
Cast: Peter Dinklage, Juliette Lewis, Esme Creed-Miles, Levon Hawke, Macon Blair, James Hetfield, Arliss Howard, Leslie Grace, David Mid Thunder
Running time: 105.5 mins
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
Based on a novel by American author Joe R. Lansdale, The Thicket starts as it means to go on with a very striking scene of a young woman picking flowers in a snowy field and later being passed by a lone, fast-moving motorcyclist on a remote rural road. The film then changes tack, when two teenagers are orphaned and are collected by their grandfather, after their father’s funeral. He is quickly killed off during a brief shootout at a ford, where the young man is left unconscious and his sister, Lula Parker (Esme Creed-Miles), is kidnapped by the motely gang that did away with their grandpa.
The young man, Jack Parker (Levon Hawke), goes in search of his sister and recruits a dangerous grave-digger, Reginald Jones (Peter Dinklage), and his colleague, Eustace Hollow (Gbenga Akinnagbe), to track down the gang, particularly their leader, the ruthless and violent killer known only as Cutthroat Bill (Juliette Lewis), who’s surprisingly, at least for those times, a woman.
The ‘rescue team’ is a group of outcasts including prostitute-in-training Sue, (Leslie Grace) who Jack rescues from a brothel on their travels. Together they embark on a perilous quest to track down Cutthroat Bill and Jack’s sister, one that eventually leads them into the very remote ‘no-man’s-land’ known as – dun, dun, dah – The Thicket.
Somewhat unusually, the film is set during the beginning of the oil era of the early 20th century, in Texas, hence the motorcycle and petrol driven cart the gravediggers travel in. The atmosphere is pretty bleak throughout with lots of excellent period detail, gritty violence and forbidding snowy landscapes to both impress and disturb the viewer.
The film is nicely shot, with some interesting set-ups and camera angles, proving that the director, and DoP (Guillermo Garza), clearly know their stuff. Plus, the score, by Ray Suen, is suitably chilly and full of quiet threat, which reflects the nature of the environment the characters find themselves travelling through.
Although The Thicket has more plus points than negatives, I found it to be an uneven watch, one that drags in places, with quite long stretches where not much happens. Also, some of the supporting characters, including gang members, while they are entertaining, just don’t get enough depth to feel fully three dimensional.
Perhaps the film’s strongest selling point is in the casting of Peter Dinklage as the sharp- shooting gravedigger, Jones, who’s probably the most interesting character in the film; although that doesn’t surprise me since Dinklage produced the film too, so he probably, understandably, gave himself the juiciest part. However, I’m glad that he did as he’s great here and it would be nice to see him getting more such roles in future. The rest of the cast do decent work here too, but Peter stands out tall – pun intended. Maybe I’m biased after really enjoying him in Games of Thrones, but for me Peter’s really captivating and nails whatever role he’s playing.
Juliette Lewis is excellent as always, playing psycho Billy, although I think they ladled on her ‘badness’ a bit too thick, despite her actually being quite heroic at times; for example, when she prevents her kidnapee getting raped by two of her male gang members.
On a side note Metallica’s James Hetfield plays Simon Deasley, the partner of brother Malachi (Macon Blair), a pair of criminals hired by a corrupt sheriff to take out Jones and Hollow, after our more diminutive gravedigger ‘busts the sheriff’s chops’ for trying to humiliate him.
And, if you want to see other films based on Lansdale’s books, Incident On and Off a Mountain Road was used as an episode of the Masters of Horror, and the feature Bubba Ho-Tep is well worth a watch too.
Signature Entertainment is distributing The Thicket and it’s currently available on Tubi and DVD.
