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Canada · 2019
1h 45m
Director Joey Klein
Starring Alex Wolff, Imogen Poots, Tom Cullen, Keir Gilchrist
Genre Drama
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Teenager Henry loses his terminally ill mother, and quickly befriends his volatile neighbor, Ana. Henry enters into a mutually-destructive partnership with Ana, and eventually finds himself embedded in the dangerous and increasingly violent world of opioid dealing.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by
While some of the more conventional genre beats could use more specificity, Klein gets such wrenching, charismatic performances that you’d forgive him of anything. This film will stay with you for a long, long time.
While Castle in the Ground may not quite hold together from a narrative perspective, it’s so atmospheric, so acute in the small, tender moments it captures and is propelled by performances of such power, that it hardly matters.
This blistering film about addiction doesn’t judge the abusers, instead offering an intimate view into a world of hurting people lost in a maze of peer pressure, letting us see how a nice guy like Henry can turn to hard drugs.
Even as Castle in the Ground begins to fray and fall apart, Joey Klein’s dour but gripping opioid drama remains believable for how perfectly it dovetails with its grieving protagonist.
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
The film is quite well-acted and made with a stylistic imprint that's atmospherically tailored to the subject matter, if a little fussy and self-conscious at times. But it's an unrewarding downer.
The result is an earnest, sometimes skillful effort that nonetheless often feels slack and underwritten, as well as ultimately less-than-rewarding.
The Film Stage by Jared Mobarak
Things get heavy pretty quick once the drugs take hold and not everyone will get out alive. While Klein lets that genre conceit cut some chaff for him, however, he doesn’t lose the overarching perspective that those who do narrowly get back home aren’t out of the woods.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
We’ve seen it before: Faces, substances and locations may change, but the self-destructive behavior and dreary vibe are pretty much constants.
Campbell gets across the quiet struggle of knowing one’s fate and trying to keep it from breaking her son’s future — concealing, then revealing, edging up to “the talk.”
RogerEbert.com by Tomris Laffly
A grueling coming-of-age thriller on the cliché-heavy side, with little hook to offer other than Wolff’s aching screen presence.
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