Fantasia Festival 2020 Review: The Oak Room

by Andrew Parker

Packed with nifty and elaborate narrative flourishes, the twisty Canadian thriller and psychodrama The Oak Room wears its various influences proudly on its flannel sleeves and to great effect. Heavily indebted to early Coen brothers works like Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, and Fargo, the literary works and unique rhythms of Cormac McCarthy and Sam Shepard, and boasting fleeting touches of Sam Peckinpah and EC Comics grotesquerie, The Oak Room is a sparse, chilly, and well paced bit of genre fare that’s as in love with the art of storytelling as it is with building menace and suspense.

Somewhere in a small Canadian town on a frigid, snowy night, barkeep Paul (Peter Outerbridge) is in the process of closing up shop when a young man from his past stops by the pub. Paul is none too pleased to see Steve (RJ Mitte), a drifter, college dropout, and the estranged son of his deceased best friend. “Little Stevie Shithead” has a debt to Paul, and the young man couldn’t be asked to return home for his own father’s funeral. When Steve stops by to get his father’s few belongings and ashes, the furious Paul calls someone over to the bar who’ll be equally unhappy to hear of the not-so-prodigal son’s return. With time to kill and the wind and snow intensifying outside, Steve attempts to keep Paul calm and entertained by spinning a bloody yarn about a violent incident at a different small town bar. Steve’s story is set on an equally snowy night after last call, and also revolves around an agitated bartender (Ari Millen) dealing with a mysterious customer (Martin Roach) who arrives begging for a drink and use of the phone.

In both of the main threads and different barroom settings of The Oak Room, something clearly isn’t right, and the whole point of the experience is trying to piece together what’s truthful about each story and where there’s deliberate misdirection. Directed by Cody Calahan (Antisocial, Let Her Out) and adapted for the screen by playwright and filmmaker Peter Genoway from his own Fringe Festival winning production, The Oak Room takes the notions that bartenders are great listeners and drunks and cons tell the best stories and runs as far as the story can take them. Calahan – delivering his best and most impactful film to date – manages to keep the pace quickened throughout, which is no small feat when one considers that Genoway’s script is as relaxed as it is chatty.

The multi-layered, time-shifting “stories within other stories” structure has been done so may times before that it’s well past the point of cliche, but there’s something remarkable and commendable about the overall simplicity of The Oak Room. One can readily see how this would dazzle on a legit stage and offer actors some juicy, morally ambiguous parts. It’s an easy story to get lost in for ninety minutes, but it’s also a script that only has two locations, both of them relatively non-descript dive bars. Calahan makes the mostly restrained nature of the story visually compelling through location choices that are big on character and some gorgeously lit cinematography courtesy of frequent collaborator Jeff Maher. The cast also does their part to exceptionally sell Genoway’s snappy dialogue and shady characters, with standout Outerbridge providing the perfect foil for Mitte’s (perhaps) morally dubious layabout. There’s also a great performance from Canadian character actor stalwart Nicholas Campbell, in a minor, but pivotal role as a major character from both Steve and Paul’s collective past.

While it’s always obvious that every character knows more than they’re letting on, and the story grows somewhat predictable once the third act rolls around, The Oak Room is a mystery that handsomely rewards attentive viewers who pay close attention to every delicately placed object and hang on every spoken word. These kinds of neo-noirs are often fun to watch and piece together as they unfold, and while The Oak Room doesn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel, it manages to be a welcome addition to a specific subset of cinematic cannon that’s rampant with substandard fare. Calahan and Genoway have clearly studied how to make such material entertaining and consistently engaging. It’s a brainy popcorn flick, which is a rarity these days and a welcome change of pace.

The Oak Room screens at part of the online Fantasia Film Festival once again on Monday, August 31st at 11:30 pm.

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