High Plains Driftless

The Driftless Area (2016) is on of those Anton-Yelchin-has-a-dead-girlfriend movies, like Odd Thomas and Burying the Ex. It was sort of a thing with him. 

It starts with Yelchin hitchhiking carrying a small rosebush. A creepy looking drifter (John Hawke) picks him up. He demands $20 for gas money, then kicks him out of the truck outside of town, and steals his rosebush. Yelchin chucks a rock at him, causing the truck to crash. Then Yelchin wakes up. That was a dream.

He is a small-town bartender in the Drifless Area, an area of the midwest that the glaciers missed, and therefore has no good soil. Hi parents died when he was young, and he's kind of drifting himself. 

Going back a while. we see an arsonist set a house on fire (it's John Hawke). Then we see a naked Zooey Deschanel walking through the smoldering ashes. She finds something to wear and wanders over to Frank Langella's house - he has been waiting for her. To spoil this whole thing - she's a ghost, and Langella helps ghosts find peace. She will need someone to get revenge for her. Guess who it's going to be.

Yelchin falls in a well, and after a night in the water, is finally rescued by Deschanel, who takes in to a place Langella has set up for her. They start falling in love, and somewhere in here, Yelchin realizes that she is a ghost (although material enough to get him out of a well), and he wants to get her killer.

He figures that the dream was a premonition, buys a rosebush and starts hitchhiking. He gets picked up by Hawke, etc, and this time pulls a bag of money out of the truck. But Hawke isn't dead. We have been following him and some of his criminal cronies, and now he's coming for Yelchin.

This was an interesting mood piece. It was director/co-writer Zachary Sluser's first feature, and the presence of Deschanel hints at twee mumblecore. I don't think it was quite that. It was more like a quirky Coen Bros. movie - Fargo with the small midwest towns and hapless but scary criminals. The ideas of destiny and the hereafter were interesting, but I'd say the actors carried it. Yelchin's numbed by sorrow affect was maybe a little over-the-top. At some point i realized that he never lifted his head. Deschanel's ghost was only somewhat fetching, but she's not some Manic Pixie Ghost Girl. She is as solemn as he is, being dead and all.

Yelchin's death colored my feelings about his performance, I guess. It wasn't his best role, not the greatest movie, but sweet and entertaining nonetheless.