Fear and Loathing

We get out of our comfort zone for a couple of disturbing thrillers:

BLUE RUIN (B) -A super-cool revenge flick is buoyed by a breakout performance by Macon Blair, previously mired in fare such as "Murder Party" and "Hellbenders 3-D."

The premise is delightfully old-school: a double-murder suspect is being freed from jail after agreeing to a plea deal, threatening to re-ignite a feud between two families. It was one of the nasty Clelands (either Wade Sr. or Wade Jr.) who offed the parents of Dwight (Blair) and his sister Sam (Amy Hargreaves) because of a love triangle involving the families' elders.

As the film opens, Dwight has been living out of his car for a few years (the rusty Pontiac Bonneville that gives the movie its title) as a wild-haired bum. The local authorities bring him in to warn him of the impending release of Wade Jr., and he immediately goes on the offensive, tracking down Wade to strike first.

On the lam, Dwight shaves his beard, cuts his hair and makes sure to hustle his sister and her kids out of town for their safety. He next deals with another Cleland son, Teddy (a solid Kevin Kolack), after securing some weapons and training from an old high school pal, Ben (Devin Ratray, one of the bumpkin cousins in "Nebraska," wonderful here).

Things get awfully bloody, but writer/director Jeremy Saulnier (Matthew Porterfield's cinematographer) elevates the material beyond simple pulp. The script is smart and the pacing swift. The movie glides by swiftly in a neat 90 minutes, building to a fantastic ending. In a pop-culture bonus, we're treated to an unrecognizable Eve Plumb (forever Jan Brady) wielding an automatic weapon as one of the crazy Cleland sisters.

But the heart of the movie is Blair, with his sad-eyed serial-killer look. He single-handedly drives the narrative and allows the viewer to slog through some gore and still care about the ending. This is dark fun.

IN FEAR (C) - A couple of young adults head out to the U.K. countryside looking for a hotel on their way to a music fest in Ireland, but instead they get trapped in a maze of back roads, and it appears that they've become the butts of someone's cruel joke.

Camera tricks abound to make us jump and screech. But veteran TV director Jeremy Lovering can't breathe life into his child-like leads, Iain De Caestecker and Alice Englert (daughter of filmmakers, including Jane Campion), who have little chemistry and even less charm. These are not personalities that can do the necessary dramatic heavy lifting.

The scenario takes place mostly in the couple's car, and Lovering is skilled at maneuvering the camera so that we feel a part of the action without getting claustrophobic. But he can't overcome the inherent tedium in having two people literally drive in circles for most of the film's running time.

This wants to be an all-out slasher film but with indie cred; it fails at both.