Film

The reservoirs of pain run fathoms deep in Jeff Nichols’s fable of Southern family feuding, proving the adage that a vendetta never truly dies—it just lies dormant. The Hayes boys have endured hard, violent times, though like the buckshot wounds on the back of the eldest, Son (Shannon), the reasons for bad blood haven’t disappeared so much as faded. The hate burbles back to the surface after the family’s matriarch returns to pass along bad news to Son and his siblings (named Boy and Kid; has ever a clan been so destined for perpetual immaturity?). Seems their dad ran out on them years ago, remarried and raised a separate brood of shit-kicking dudes; now said deadbeat is pushing up daisies. The trio crashes the funeral, not to praise Pops but to drag his sorry name through the mud. Their half brothers declare war. You can guess what happens next.

Like his fellow Mason-Dixon minimalist David Gordon Green (the film’s producer), Nichols favors mood and ellipses over momentum and explanations, which gives this contemporary Hatfields-versus-McCoys narrative a beguiling, drifting atmosphere. The Greenish go-to shots of dreamy landscapes get recycled a few times too often, but credit Shannon for keeping things grounded. His stoic Son barely moves a facial muscle and still breaks your heart.