A heist gone wrong. A sheriff left to uncover what went down. One survivor remains. It’s a familiar, classic template for a caper of this sort. And while many of its structural and stylistic choices borrow from movies before it, Dutch Southern’s ONLY THE GOOD SURVIVE is eager to surprise its audience every step of the way.
Brea (Sidney Flanigan) sits in the interrogation room at the local county jail. The sheriff (Frederick Weller) has taken her in to unravel the botched crime that has occurred in their small Texas town. Ultimately serving as the film’s narrator (reliable or otherwise), Brea recounts her role in the events that transpired.
It started out simple enough. Brea’s boyfriend, Ry (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), enlisted the help of Erve (Will Ropp) and Dev (Darius Fraser) for a seemingly easy operation: break into the home of an elderly couple and steal their stash of rare and valuable gold coins. Needing a lookout for the heist, they recruited Brea to tag along. While searching through the house, however, they find something far more strange. This discovery sets off a sequence of events involving a bizarre conspiracy in the town.
A punk rock comedic crime thriller, ONLY THE GOOD SURVIVE is nothing if not animated, implementing a kinetic, comic book-ish visual style that reminded me at times of Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim adaptation. Combining breakneck pacing and a purposefully disjointed narrative, it’s frankly overwhelming how much information the film presents throughout its 92-minute runtime. The pep in its step is admirable, but it’s also easy to get lost in the dizzying whirlwind. Perhaps subsequent viewings would clear up any confusion, as it is a lot to take in at once.
Being the genre mash-up that it is (even the film makes a referential joke about this), the whole thing is certainly unpredictable, with a screenplay deliberately designed and plotted for economic efficiency. Given how much its themes center around the concept of found family, an occasional beat from the action to flesh out its characters and relationships may have resulted in its more critical moments hitting with greater emotional impact.
Many of the ingredients for a crowd-pleasing indie can be found in ONLY THE GOOD SURVIVE, and there is absolutely an audience out there who will eat this particular brand of hybrid filmmaking right up. Though I wish I connected with the material more deeply, it has a lot of moxie, and that’s not nothing.
ONLY THE GOOD SURVIVE had its N.Y.C. premiere at Brooklyn Horror Film Fest on October 15th, 2023.
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