White Lightnin'

Although Jesco ‘Dancing Outlaw’ White is a real individual, and the subject of no less than three different documentaries, this debut British feature weaves sundry biographical details into an awkward cross-hatch of oblique celluloid portrait and backwoods horror thriller. Pushing beyond ‘Deliverance’ territory into white-trash caricature, it’s uncertain whether this parade of manic country-style hoofing, substance abuse, violent psychosis and escalating carnage is intended as a heightened vision of White’s excessive personal trajectory, or merely a showcase for the filmmaker’s facility for faux down ’n’ dirty stylings garnished with leeringly adolescent Southern gothic carnage. It doesn’t convince on either score, despite an incessant first-person voiceover telling us how to process what we see. Still, a nod for ambition in searching outside the usual narrow-gauge of homegrown social realism, and leading man Ed Hogg really does give it everything he’s got, though you are left with the impression of unstinting effort expended on what might not have been a coherent idea in the first place.