“I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore”: Earthy Perfection

Melanie Lynskey is my new celluloid heroine. The New Zealander is flawless in practically every way in the eclectic as hell crime dramedy “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore”. Lynskey brings us Ruth, a Regular Jane managing as best she can working as a nursing assistant at a second-rate hospital while living alone in a particularly oddball suburb of one of the weirdest locations on our planet. This would be Portland, Oregon. I know. I’ve been there. A lot.

Ruth is a foul-mouthed, pot smoking, beer swigging (Coors Light, a girl after my own heart) wallflower of a woman whose life is turned tush over tea kettle after her roost is robbed and her fave stuff is swiped. In the wake of the break-in, Ruth suffers an extreme case of violation, all the while repeating the refrain that she wants everybody to quit being such total assholes. And not just the creeps who ripped off her rental. Enlisting the aid of a fellow social misfit loner in her neighborhood (Elijah Wood in an inspired turn), the peculiar pair go off in search of the crooks and her cache.

The first three-quarters of this strange saga are consistently hilarious and quirky on behalf of all involved. An abrupt shift in tone fashions the film’s final frames as decidedly dark and sinister before succumbing full force to explicit violence and graphic blood spatter. But then that’s pretty much how it goes when you’ve taken a deep dive into the deranged and despicable as this daring duo do.

Ultimately it all serves a purpose. To show that even the most regular among us, that is to say you and I, are fully capable of accomplishing far greater than we ever dare dreamed was possible. If we’d but kick ourselves in the cans and get about it.

That, and we want our fuckin’ laptop back bad enough.

Warning: Illegal string offset 'Movie' in /home/themov15/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp-review-pro/includes/functions.php on line 2358