I don't wanna cause any unnecessary stress, but I just came from Gleason's property and he seems to think there's a panther roaming the area.

It took a bit of time to get back into watching films. 

My attention span is not what it -

- Ooh! Shiny! - 

- Where was I? 

Anyway.

Part of my rehabilitation was watching so-bad-they're-maybe-good films. 

Another part has been trying to find out-of-the-way films. 

To explain this; I'm a huge William Gibson fan. Of his books, I'd put Pattern Recognition right up there as my favourite. Pattern Recognition's central character, Cayce Pollard, is fascinating on many levels, but one of these is that she has an allergic reaction to certain brands (in the primary instance, the Michelin Man). 

I don't claim anything as extreme as that, but I have started feeling less and less like going to see what you might un-ironically call 'mainstream cinema', partly because the story-lines tend to be... Guessable, I think, is the word. 

There's a whole debate to be had about the necessity of selling recognisable product - i.e. guaranteeing an audience with the promissory note that what they're going to see will fall within expected experience boundaries - which is fine and good. Really, it is fine and good, because you have to have a template that at least tries to guarantee a return on investors' money. 

It's getting a bit bad, though, because I now hate the idea of going to the cinema, and that makes me feel old. It also makes me feel like, say, a Methodist going to a Baptist church; the same religion, but completely different expectations. 

For instance; I know I'm not the only one to think this, although that doesn't help, but; is it so fucking difficult to turn off your smart phone in the cinema? If you're so in-demand and can't miss an email or your personal empire will crumble, why the fuck are you watching a film? 

Having a bright screen in your field-of-vision in a darkened cinema is just distracting as shit, really. 

Then there's your common-or-garden talkers, crunchers, and all-around depth and variety of humanity represented in the worst aspects of what people think they can get away with in public spaces. 

So cinemas are out, unless justifiable homicide has been put on the lawbooks here and I simply haven't noticed. 

This has led to me trawling my local CEX to find cheapjack films or less cheap films that are, in some way, off the beaten track. 

This is how I came to end up watching Red Hill. 

If you're looking for the short verdict - and if you're looking for the short verdict and you've read this far, what the hell - then Red Hill is well worth watching. 

The trailer does a good job of making it look like a horror slash western, however, when it's really not. 

Spoilers from hereon out, in case you needed warning.

The one main problem with Red Hill is narrative necessity. You have two divergent plot strands; a young police constable moving to the sticks for the quiet life, and a violent prisoner travelling back to the town to exact a bloody revenge on all the law therein.

These just so happen to happen on the same day. 

In some ways, this may be a budgetary fact; to film an extra, say, twenty minutes to half-an-hour of Cooper adjusting to small-town life, getting to know people, settling in but not always sure of the secret below the town's surface would probably have cost too much and slowed the pacing down. 

So, fine. Narrative necessity demands that the escaped murderer - well, 'murderer' - comes to town on the same day the new policeman arrives. 

Such is life. 

I would take issue with one other neat piece of narrative causality, however; for a small town, Red Hill has almost no visible inhabitants. The only time you see more than, say, ten people at once, is at a church meeting at the beginning used to establish the Sheriff's character, where a lot of lineless extras sit in the church hall and clap and holler. 

After that, the most crowded scene is where the Sheriff rounds up his posse, and even then I'm struggling to remember if there were more than ten people there. 

After that, the townsfolk disappear, because there's a storm coming - so the storm warning is issued and everyone is told to hole up and hide - although the storm is, of course, also a metaphorical storm in the form of Jimmy. 

Jimmy is, arguably, the most fascinating character, even though he doesn't say a word until the final few minutes. He's portrayed as this force of nature sweeping into town to exact revenge on the people who wronged him in the worst possible way and made him pay the price for it. 

There's a slight story-line schism around Jimmy, however. Cooper's plot is kind of TV-movie big town cop in a small town, with all the cutesy that implies; but when Jimmy rides into town, that's all shelved and Cooper's elastic-band stretches further away from the main story-line until the end where it snaps back and draws him with it. Put it this way; out of narrative necessity, Cooper is knocked out and left in locations far away from the action twice, and has to work his way back into the main plotline. 

This means the pacing takes a knock here and there, but this is saved somewhat by the fact that the visuals are gorgeous. Seriously; any concerns about a tv-movie plot are taken care of by the cinematography. Occasionally the framing is a little weird, but otherwise it's amazing.

So the main problem is that the two story-lines take a long time to mesh, and because of this neither really has any room to properly breathe and evolve; they both just kind of happen and then happen together. It doesn't help that Jimmy's story is arguably much more compelling than Cooper's, although that's a function of the revenge story-line versus the pastoral story-line, and it's kind of inevitable. 

It was worth, however, the £2 I paid for it. 

I fear this cannot be said for the next selection, for which - like an idiot - I paid £6 for even though it was never going to be worth that much;