The Outrun - Movie Review

Critics Score - 8 of 10

General Audience Score - 7 of 10

I’ve never been much of a drinker, in fact I’ve only been intoxicated once in my entire life. Me and my friend Joel each did eighteen shots of Captain Morgan and other various flavored rums and vodkas until the inevitable occurred. My friend had the fortune of making it to the restroom that night, myself, I spent the following day cleaning vomit off of my couch and living room carpet. As much fun as that experience was, I’ve never drank like that again. The new film The Outrun explores the character Rona, played by the incredible Saoirse Ronan, who continues to prove her merit as one of the best young actresses working today. Based on the experiences of the writer/director Nora Fingscheidt, who was pulled headfirst into alcoholism, we observe its effects on the character Rona as she pushes through her struggles, periods of sobriety, relapses and the aftermath. The film is as haunting in its portrayal of the effects of alcohol as it is hopeful in its display of the human spirit’s resistance to addictive substances that our minds can become enslaved by. It is an aesthetically beautiful film, gorgeous scenery and landscapes abound as the cinematography impresses throughout the almost two hour runtime. For those that have struggled with the effects of alcoholism, either personally or with loved ones, the loneliness, isolation and rehabilitation journey will no doubt hit close to home. The rest of us will find a fascinating character study and foreboding tale of addiction and recovery awaiting us at the end of The Outrun.

SYNOPSIS - Our journey into the life of a struggling alcoholic begins on a beach, our opening scene shows a little girl in a sweatshirt, blue jeans and black boots strolling along the seaside. The sounds of waves lightly washing onto the shore and seagulls squawking in the background fills our ears. We hear her boots squishing as she walks through layers of brown seaweed that’s washed ashore and accumulated on the sand. She examines a piece of wood or maybe bark and tosses it into the water, we watch it sink before the camera follows suit. An underwater camera shot shows us the shallow waters with plumes of more brown seaweed popping up from the ocean floor like an underwater forest. Eventually, we begin to see movement off in the murky distance, finally we catch sight of a seal swimming and begin to hear the voice of Rona (Saoirse Ronan). She says that legend has it that people who drown in the waters will come back as seals. We watch as a seal under the water looks in the general direction of the camera, slowly treading its fins, maneuvering itself around its aquatic home. Rona tells us more of the legend about how these reincarnated “selkies”, as they’re known, emerge from the water at night, take off their seal skin, turn back into humans and dance naked in the moonlight.

As the title screen appears amid some shots of colored lights, were transported to a bar of some kind, the camera weaves and bobs, we hear Rona and begin to catch glimpses of her as the camera work begins to stabilize itself. Rona is finishing off drinks, presumably left by other patrons of the establishment she’s visiting. Rona is clearly had a bit too much alcohol and as the bar is fixing to close for the night, one of the employees approaches her to assist her to the door saying, “Gotta get you out now, come on.” Rona has no interest of leaving that easily, however, and begins dancing with a chair before stumbling to the ground. A bigger man named Dave comes to escort her from the premises and a struggle ensues, a few select pieces of profanity are thrown and eventually Rona finds herself outside.

Like Rona, the cameraman struggles to get himself upright, the camera again giving us the illusion of an inebriated persons point of view, out in the dark, walking down the sideway. We see a car pass and a voice shouts, “Hey, you need a ride?”. The camera lingers on the taillights of a car up ahead, red blurry blobs up the road indicating a car has stopped to offer her transportation. As the shot switches, we’re in some kind of exam room, a woman is typing on a computer and we finally see Rona, her eye is black, we must assume she has been assaulted. The woman asks her what her age is and where she works, we learn she’s twenty-nine and currently unemployed. When she finally asks about mental illness, the scene cuts and were taken to Rona’s father, Andrew (Stephen Dillane), modular home, the blue ocean stretching out behind it. 

The film takes some jumps forward and backwards in time, but interestingly one of the key ways the film cleverly allows us to keep tabs on where we’re at is by Rona’s blue hair, how much of it is blue. We catch it in different stages as it has grown out and eventually it’s dyed a reddish color. On the bottom of the screen of Rona’s fathers little seaside farm, we see onscreen text alerting us that she’s thirty days sober, then sixty, then ninety, months without a drink falling off the calendar in seconds. We watch her helping out around her fathers sheep farm, shearing sheep and delivering the baby lambs. The deeper we dive into this world of a recovering alcoholic, we begin to get a more and more detailed understanding of what it’s like to be in her headspace.

She visits her religious mother Annie (Saskia Reeves) who empathizes with her daughters struggling addiction, but also has separated herself from Rona and Andrew and devoted herself to religion. Intermittently through the film we get flashbacks to Rona’s relationship with Daynin (Paapa Essiedu), her boyfriend, we progressively get deeper into their relationship and how her addiction is taking its toll. By the finale, we’ve rode the roller coaster that is our main protagonists life for a couple hours, hitting a few highs and crashing down into the lowest of lows. We may not all struggle with alcohol as Rona does, but we’re all coping with something and her strength resonates across the screen and is felt by all who tag along on this run.

Aside from the films main themes of alcoholism and rehabilitation, The Outrun also discusses loneliness and isolation via the effects of alcohol abuse and its impact on one’s mental health. The writer/director Nora Fingscheidt also fascinatingly touches on environmentalism and the human effect on our ecosystem as she goes about telling this story, blending them seamlessly together into this fascinating character study. Fingscheidt’s film takes on a slightly bittersweet tone as it navigates a terribly dark time in her characters journey, yet ends on an overall positive note, highlighting the human spirit’s resilience and resistance to addictive and controlling substances. While this film clearly didn’t have the budget to hire a top tier DP/cinematographer, this camera work is excellent nonetheless. It’s doing a lot with very little, capturing closer shots of smaller, intimate moments of struggle and sometimes despair while juxtaposing them with some gorgeous scenery of the lush Scottish isles. The seeming ever present blue of the ocean and lush green landscapes assisting the film’s themes about nature. It also highlights and in some ways compares the harmful effect humans are having on the environment and it hurting certain species of animals to the harmful effects of substance abuse on the human body. An original score by Jan Miserre and John Gürtler offers us a soft and gentle yet often ethereal experience as we navigate with this character through her journey. With a runtime at just under two hours, this film is slower yet deliberately paced, it never slowed to the point I began to disengage, but for general audiences the film might make some a bit restless. I’ve seen both of Saoirse Ronan’s performances this year, having already seen Blitz, and I can say with full confidence that this is the better performance, and it’s not even that close in my mind. Ronan is an incredible actress and this work is among some of her best, whereas in Blitz she’s reduced to a supporting role at best, but here she’s got the floor to herself. Ronan and Rona are one in The Outrun. All in all this smaller indie drama is a darling of a film and even if it’s not in my top 5 movies of 2024, in my humble opinion, it is clearly among some of the years best.

SUMMARY - Despite the smaller nature of the film, the big central performance by Ronan and the discussion the film is interested in having about these themes will draw many a viewer in like moths to a flame. If you’re as big of a fan of smaller indie dramas as I am that leave you with lots to chew on, then you might have to out run the clock to catch The Outrun while it’s still in theaters.