The Strange Ones ***½ (2017, Alex Pettyfer, James Freedson-Jackson, Emily Althaus, Gene Jones, Owen Campbell, Tobias Campbell) – Classic Movie Review 12,760

The Strange Ones is a mysterious and thrilling 2017 American psychological thriller indie movie starring Alex Pettyfer and James Freedson-Jackson as a twenty-something man and a teenage boy running away on a road trip across rural America after a house fire.

The Strange Ones is a mysterious and thrilling 2017 American psychological thriller indie movie starring Alex Pettyfer, James Freedson-Jackson, Emily Althaus, Gene Jones, Owen Campbell, and Tobias Campbell. It is directed by Christopher Radcliff and Lauren Wolkstein, and written by Radcliff, as a feature-length version of their 2011 short film.

A house fire sends Sam (James Freedson-Jackson), a 15-year-old gay kid, and Nick (Alex Pettyfer), a twenty-something man, running away on a road trip across rural America. On their way, they tell people that they are brothers Nick and Jeremiah and on vacation. But something darker and more dangerous seems to be going on.

This masterly film is seriously unhinged and disturbing, with its deranged characters and threatening situations custom designed to take you out of your comfort zone. You never really know where you are in the story or who you are keeping company with, partly as it runs in a non-linear progression and unfolds punctuated with a series of mystifying flashbacks. A sense of ghastly doom and awful horror hover over the entire film. It sweats copiously and uncontrollably with almost unbearable tension. It never lets up. There’s a hell of a lot going on in just 81 minutes.

There is a unique noir-style plot, there are memorable noir-style characters, but they have to be entangled and unravelled through the mystery, as what you see ain’t necessarily so. You know something bad has happened, and that something bad is going to happen, and it does. The Strange Ones doesn’t frustrate expectations but it does break the usual rules of story-telling. So, good.

Like Sam and Nick, The Strange Ones lives dangerously. It’s a walk on the wild side. Handle with care, succumb to its spell. Christopher Radcliff and Lauren Wolkstein deliver the special mood and style of the film with enormous confidence and flair.

And the performances? Alex Pettyfer and James Freedson-Jackson just couldn’t be better. Wow they do creepy well! Pettyfer’s famed acting style of earnest intensity serves him well here, and he gives it a good work-out, but even so the film belongs to Freedson-Jackson, who takes it and runs with it.

It was released on DirecTV on December 7, 2017, before releasing on video on demand and in cinemas on 5 January 2018 from Vertical Entertainment.

The cast are Alex Pettyfer as Nick, James Freedson-Jackson as Sam, Emily Althaus as Kelly, Gene Jones as Gary, Owen Campbell as Luke, Tobias Campbell as Jeremiah, Marin Ireland as Crystal, Will Blomker as Robert, Birgit Huppuch as Dr Faller, and Olivia Wang as Sarah.

Alex Pettyfer has a caustic take on Hollywood: ‘LA is growing on me a little bit, but I think it’s this insidious pool where nearly everyone lives in fear. Geographically it’s fantastic: in a half hour, you can be on the beach in one direction, go snowboarding in another, or go out into the desert. But socially it’s disgusting.’

British actor Alexander Richard Pettyfer (born 10 April 1990) was cast as Alex Rider in the 2006 film version of Stormbreaker. He also starred in I Am Number Four, Beastly and Magic Mike.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,760

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Alex Pettyfer was born on 10 April 1990. Here he is at the Stormbreaker premiere in July 2006.