Pared to the bone, this brooding thriller is reminiscent of Blood Simple with a steelier underbelly than this might suggest.
A master class in suspense with barely two lines of dialogue spoken in the first twenty minutes, we are quickly sucked into a disorientating mystery as we attempt to understand what terrible event led to a sympathetic man living alone in his titular blue ruin of a rust bucket car.
As we follow him with increasing dread, we know things are going to go terribly wrong, but never how exactly it will unfold. Beneath the skin of a revenge thriller beats the heart of a character study in machismo, immaturity, family, selfishness, religion and sadness.
It’s a rare beast that manages to work so well as a piece of genre cinema while simultaneously elevating itself beyond this to something altogether more complex and meditative.
A terrifying exploration of what happens when an ordinary person is allowed drop through the cracks, failed by social services, the police, and the everyday values of the society in which they once participated.