'Take Me to the River': Vagueness sinks moody, unsettling family drama

Take Me to the River, the first feature film from writer-director Matt Sobel, opens with 17-year-old Ryder (Logan Miller) in a car with his parents, Deadwood's Robin Weigert and The West Wing's Richard Schiff, on the way from California to a family reunion in rural Nebraska.

He asks whether his relatives know he's gay. His mom, Cindy, replies that maybe it's best that they don't.

It's the first uneasy step in Take Me to the River, a movie that revels in its uneasiness. The movie pivots from what I expected it to be: a family drama about an outsider, as the opening conversation suggests. Instead, it becomes an eerie mood piece about secrets buried deep in a family's fabric.

Ryder does his best to remain an outsider. He might not come out to the family, but he insists on wearing a deep V-neck shirt and short shorts. His Nebraska relatives are aghast - he's showing his knees!

His 9-year-old cousin, Molly (Louis' Ursula Parker), takes a special interest in him, insisting they visit a barn alone together. The camera focuses on the barn until a scream breaks the quiet of the family reunion. Molly runs out, blood on her dress, with a perplexed Ryder running behind her.

Molly's dad, Keith (Josh Hamilton), loses his mind, screaming at both Ryder and Cindy, in part to protect his daughter, but also because of some sins of the past.

Throughout the movie, Ryder decries the family's refusal to tell the truth, whether it's about his own sexuality or something that happened before his mother left Nebraska for college and Los Angeles.

Things are being hidden from him, but they're also being hidden from us. We don't know what happened in the barn, and we don't know what happened decades before the barn.

This confusion is meant to color the movie with that feeling of uneasiness hinted at in the opening scene. But Take Me to the River is too vague for its own good, losing its power as it meanders into its second act.

The tone is not strong enough to hold us. But the performances - from the perpetually underemployed Weigert especially - are powerful, bringing an emotional center to the movie that almost makes this flawed effort work.

meichel@phillynews.com
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Take Me to the River
Directed by Matt Sobel. With Logan Miller, Robin Weigert, Josh Hamilton, Richard Schiff, and Ursula Parker. Distributed by Film Movement.
Running time: 84 mins.
Parent's guide: Not rated.
Playing at: Ritz at the Bourse.