Blow the Man Down

Blow the Man Down opens with an atten­tion-grab­bing group ren­di­tion of the epony­mous sea shan­ty, which orig­i­nat­ed in the 19^th cen­tu­ry, with alter­nate lyrics ref­er­enc­ing the New Eng­land port town of the film’s set­ting. Thanks to a mon­tage of misty skies, icy-look­ing water and squelchy sea crea­tures, as well as the region and shared taste for anachro­nis­tic music, view­ers may ini­tial­ly be remind­ed of Robert Eggers’ recent The Light­house.

Instead, writer/​director pair Brid­get Sav­age Cole and Danielle Krudy present a mul­ti-lay­ered con­tem­po­rary mys­tery that’s less styl­is­ti­cal­ly out­landish than Eggers’ film, though cer­tain­ly full of its own mem­o­rable idio­syn­crasies. To name just one, those singing fish­er­men reap­pear as a Greek cho­rus of sorts, pop­ping up through­out the film with a song and the odd fourth wall-break­ing glance to camera.

Those shan­ty-chanters and a few sup­port­ing play­ers aside, Blow the Man Down is all about women. In Maine’s East­er Cove, a long-ail­ing matri­arch has passed away, leav­ing her two adult daugh­ters divid­ed over how to man­age her unpaid debts: the old­er Priscil­la (Sophie Lowe) is deter­mined to keep the fam­i­ly fish shop going, while Mary Beth (Mor­gan Say­lor) is des­per­ate to final­ly escape this sleepy town for a col­lege place that was deferred in order to care for their moth­er. After feud­ing at the wake, the lat­ter goes to a bar to drink the pain away, becom­ing chum­my with a bel­liger­ent man whose lat­er attempt­ed sex­u­al assault of her results in him receiv­ing a har­poon in the neck.

The sis­ters’ sub­se­quent impro­vis­ing of a (dark­ly com­ic) means of dis­pos­ing of the body brings to mind the Coen broth­ers’ Far­go. But it is not the only nar­ra­tive thread, as Cole and Krudy are also inter­est­ed in a more expan­sive por­trait of the some­what sin­is­ter machi­na­tions of quaint small­town life.

Mrs Con­nol­ly was also a matri­arch fig­ure for East­er Cove itself, and her absence leaves sev­er­al senior female res­i­dents (Annette O’Toole, June Squibb and Marce­line Hugot) jock­ey­ing to pull the strings, their sights pri­mar­i­ly set on dis­man­tling the local bed and break­fast which oper­ates indis­creet­ly as a broth­el – there’s lit­er­al­ly a can­dy dish of con­doms by the front door. It tran­spires that the own­er, Enid (Mar­go Mar­tin­dale), and one of her sex work­ers, Alex­is (Gayle Rankin), have a con­nec­tion to Mary Beth’s victim.

As the var­i­ous nar­ra­tive strands begin to inter­twine, and as the num­ber of char­ac­ters to keep track of stacks up, the telling of this macabre tale of mur­der, mon­ey and moon­light­ing begins to feel a lit­tle over­crowd­ed come the halfway point. But the dead­pan script and an array of com­pelling per­for­mances will more than sus­tain your inter­est all the way through to the killer ending.

Blow the Man Down is avail­able on Ama­zon Prime Video from 20 March.