The Strange Ones

source: The Strange Ones

Can't understand the negative reviews! They must have watched this film while vacuuming the house. This film is a psychological mystery drama of a young boy and and older man escaping something that is slowly revealed through flashbacks throughout the story. And yes - what is real and what is imagined is part of the plot plus it will involve the viewers concept of what is real and what is imagined -- for me is was the youth farm and what exactly was happening there. Also what was the actual emotional connection between Nick and Sam. The recurring presents of the cat and the meaning of the cave play an essential role in this story.

It was so good to see Alex Pettyfer trying something different in his career! His presence was so strong in this film, I would really love to see him make more movies like this. Really liked it :)

The movie's gravity pulled me in and I enjoyed the slow-burn pacing and indirect ways the story revealed itself. By the end however I had just as many questions as answers and while some reviewers obviously have enjoyed their own deconstructive interpretations, I just think the creators should have been more clear.

Behind the surface ... we have two individuals travelling and we know almost nothing about those two male characters apart from them being related. That is established and you can kind of come up with reasons why they are on a road trip, but if you haven't read anything about the movie, you may be in the dark and guess wrong. So if you like slow burning mystery (drama), this one could be for you. It is really well acted and the ambiguity surrounding the characters and their backstory is what drives the movie (no pun intended). Hopefully you can watch this with patience and take it in as it moves on (again sorry for the pun). There is not happening much, but you could cut the tension in the air with a knife ... if that sounds intriguing, you should watch this

Early in "The Strange Ones," there is a crucial scene in which the two main characters, the twenty-something Nick and the teenage Sam, are on the road, clearly running away from their past. Sam's home has been burnt to the ground, and, inside, the body of his father has been found, not a victim of the fire, but of being bludgeoned to death. Nick and Sam arrive at a motel with an inviting swimming pool. The kind lady proprietor offers them free lodging during the off season. But then, the young kid Sam has a conversation with the woman, in which he calls his "brother" a liar and suggests that the woman may be in danger due to the brother's penchant for violence. Afterwards, Nick and Sam make a quick exit from the motel after the woman has likely shown them the door. What are we to make of Sam's advice to the hotel manager? Was he telling the truth about his psychotic older friend? Or was he lying because he himself is the psycho and is only behaving like the sadistic little kid that he is? The film keeps the audience guessing about the true nature of the road buddies, and it does so with psychological symbols and archetypes, such as the black cat, the cave, and the Oedipal complex. One might argue that the film is overly manipulative of its audience. In one scene at a wilderness retreat for young people, the wily man who heads up the program asks Sam to recount his recurring nightmare. The audience views the nightmare in which Sam kills his father. But is the dream a distortion of reality, or was this a true depiction of the murder? One of the strengths of the film is the evocation of a sinister mood. An ominous feeling hovers over most of the scenes and the characters. While walking through the woods, Nick and Sam encounter a middle age couple, and the mundane conversation is filled with dark undercurrents. Sam arrives at the children's camp and observes a couple of the boys engaged in theft or some activity that is verboten; they insist to Sam that he not reveal what he saw to the camp manager. Is this really recreational camp for youngsters, or is it a penal colony/rehab center for juvenile delinquents? In the most bizarre scene of all, a female classmate of Sam has invited him to live in her home after the death of his father. But the scene in the bedroom with two teenagers is grotesque, unwholesome, and disturbing, especially when the young woman reveals that she covered for Sam when telling the police that he was just joking when he texted her that he wanted to kill his father! She also waxes philosophical when saying that "You never really know a person, you know." And yet, she seems to know all of the intimate details of the troubled history of young Sam. In the scene following the bedroom conversation, Sam hightails it out of the house with his backpack, heading back to the wilderness. This ominous road picture about two young males who at best are pathological liars and at worst cold blooded murderers and arsonists, may be summed up in this snippet of dialogue: --"Where are we?" --"Nowhere." Indeed, the state of mind of the two strange ones may not be found on any traditional road map, but only in the deepest, darkest caverns of the human psyche.

I like atmospheric. I like edgy. I like esoteric. I just don't like to be bludgeoned into a stupor with it. That's what watching the mega-weird murder mystery drama "The Strange Ones" conspired to do to me. The only remotely redeeming aspects to recommend here is the spooky score by a pair of killer flutists and the performance of the great character actor Gene Jones. The rest of this plodding trash can be tossed deep into that creepy cave and abandoned.

There are positive and negative things about The Strange Ones but overall the movie is not good enough to be remembered. The positive things would be the acting and the filming, that wasn't bad but unfortunately not good enough to make this movie special. The bad thing is that the story is slow and it doesn't have a high entertaining level, and even if there is some mystery building in the end it just fails to deliver. To me The Strange Ones is just an average movie, a movie you watch out of boredom and continue to watch without much interest. I didn't fall asleep while watching it but it was a close call.

I've read all thirty two reviews for this film by the time I got here on IMDb (thirty one actually as someone posted the same review twice), and it's gratifying that at least a minority of viewers got what the story was about. It's not that esoteric if one pays attention, however I'll grant that there are different ways one can interpret the film because of the surrealistic way in which it's drawn out. In particular, the flashback scenes and dream sequences can lead one to different conclusions about Sam (James Freedson-Jackson), so for the purpose of this review, I'll take my own stab at it. Essentially, I believe that the story for Sam ended when he was hit by the car near the end of the movie. What follows in my estimation, is a coma induced dream in which Sam is forced to face up to the guilt for the murder of his father. If the true circumstance of the father's death were ever to come to light, one could argue justifiable homicide as Sam's defense and it might have worked, but that's off on a tangent to what I'm saying. The manner in which Sam allows others to presume Nick's (Alex Pettyfer) responsibility for the murder, those scenes are cleverly done, as when Sam 'admits' to the detective (Melanie Nicholls-King) that Nick did it. In what I consider the dream sequence, the camp counselor Gary (Gene Jones) attempts to relieve Sam of his guilt by stating the argument in my summary line above. He uses words echoing those of Nick in that earlier diner scene when he made the coffee cup disappear. There's a degree of subliminal transference occurring from Nick to Gary when the counselor states "If you want it to stop, make it stop". There are other clues regarding the relationship between Sam and Nick. Sam's classmate Sarah (Olivia Wang) provides the most damning evidence when she states that Sam's texts talked about wanting his father dead. What she got wrong was the idea that Sam was in love with Nick, only because the two of them (Sam and Nick) spent so much time together while the father worked a night shift. Those two comments were what prompted Sam to run away again, incriminating as they were if Sam's motives were ever to be questioned by authorities. You have to remember that in one of their conversations together, Nick told Sam that if he ever found out that his father was abusing him, he would kill him. That in itself might have given Sam the idea that Nick would be a perfect scapegoat for the intended murder. The first time I watched the movie I was a little baffled by the abrupt ending, but a second viewing helped clear things up. Returning to the cave, remember this was in the coma induced dream, Sam was recalling an earlier conversation with Nick who told Sam that he once spent the night in that cave, and when he emerged, he came out a new person. In Sam's subconscious mind, he was attempting to come to grips with the fact that he got away with murder, and if he were to recover, it would be to emerge into the world as a new person with the desire of starting over. We'll never know of course, because we don't have enough information to know whether Sam will survive and recover from the hit and run.

The portrayal of a boy named Sam, and his supposed older brother, Nick, are on the run when Sam's father is murdered and then the home set a blaze to cover the tracks. Through out the journey, clue begin to reveal themselves like that of a Russian nesting doll. By the time you get to the final piece of this murder mystery, it all becomes too clear: looks are deceiving in who you think is responsible. There was a lot of suggestive scene play on nodding in directions of what was really happening. The layers being peeled back, one after the other, gave insight to the thought process of Sam. A few key things, which connected as a trail of breadcrumbs. It's how you end up realizing why Sam, even though a boy, was twisted with rage and denial into a self destructive sociopath on the verge of pulling a Dexter like mentality by the end of the film. From the questioning of the coffee cups existence to his memory flashbacks, it's no wonder by the end you could see it coming from a mile away. Nick's character, portrayed by the ever talented Alex Pettyfer, really helped shape the scenes throughout the film. From his approach in subtle, yet effective, expressing care towards Sam to his confrontations with the boy, really displayed a delivery that helped divert the viewer from ever knowing early on who was responsible for the murder and fire. There were moments you began to question if Pettyfer's character was the shadow of an antagonist, that ends up turning around by a pivotal moment revealing Freedson-Jackson to be the darker force. There are those who complained about the very end and it's easily showing Sam doing what Nick had said about the cave at the same age when he ran away. But it's also pointing out silently where Nick was last and Sam revisiting the location to bid farewell. The only issue, it's due to viewers who might get confused easily, the transition of the two last parts where it didn't hint at it being a flashback scene when Sam goes to sit down to talk about his nightmares. There it's revealing what really happened. Sort of just jumped right into it without even a real hint till you saw what was going on. Overall, it's a highly underrated film, which touched on some dark aspects in the human psyche with more visual directive approaches and equally based scripted dialogue. Fully recommend this to all those who enjoy a thrilling indie flick that has a surprised ending twist!