Hoss
2021 · 10m · USA
Directed by Ryan McGlade
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
A rural Pennsylvania pastor finds an unidentified stranger sitting inside the home of a recently deceased elderly couple he'd been checking on. What follows is less a mystery than a slow, dissolving stare-down with the uncanny.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Pastor walks into a dead couple's house. There's already a guy there. McGlade refuses to explain, which is precisely why I'm in.
McGlade dialed down into stark landscape compositions and slow dissolves — Twin Peaks: The Return rural register, Reichardt's Old Joy patience. Letting strangeness leak in is the right formal choice for this material.
McGlade dialing his usual chaos down into stark landscape compositions and slow dissolves for a rural-Pennsylvania pastor-meets-uncanny-stranger sit-down — restraint is the choice and it's the harder one. Kelly Reichardt territory done at NoBudge scale is a real reach.
Reviews
Vaguely unsettling and unnatural, with stark landscape visuals and slow dissolve cuts.