Saw the movie last night. It's haunted me all day. If you need your movies highly polished and following established plotlines, don't see this. This is a whole different game. See it if you love raw, felt films in unmitigated settings. Cast with people who live in the West Virginia town where the film was shot, people who have not acted before, people who came up with their own dialogue, for the most part, it's a film that comes off as suffocating and binding as life can feel in these places, if you're afraid of losing your way in them. I couldn't stop watching and couldn't stop looking away. Both.
The three lead actors are luminous. Amazing. The DVD offers their casting interviews, which are wonderful extras. It stuns me how some people just glow on film. These interviews reinforce that.
My favorite character in the movie might be the doll factory where many scenes are shot. I have to think of it as a character. What a place! Could have been a heavy club of a metaphor, especially the scenes at the end, but somehow it never is. It's murky and scary and dark and innocent all at the same time. Great little dumbshow/painting/illustration going on there. Amazing. We never see a fully assembled doll, do we? (Unless that's one of them in a ground-up heap in the daughter's mess of toys?)
Ah. I loved it.