Mark Reviews Movies: HOLLER

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 10, 2021

Somewhere in Ohio, like in so many other parts of the country, a town is dying. Most of the factories have closed. All of those jobs have disappeared, but the people, still needing all of the essentials that a regular paycheck can provide, remain. Why do they stay? Holler suggests that isn't even a question worth asking. There is no answer, no choice, and no other alternative.

Writer/director Nicole Riegel's debut feature (adapted from a short she made) follows two such people, a sister and a brother, trying to get by in this place, where there's neither hope nor success—only survival. One other character, who has made a financially viable—if illegal and dangerous—business out of the wreckage of this town, offers a little bit of comfort to this way of life and living. "At least here," unlike whatever a new town or a different job market or a college might offer, "you can see the top."

Ruth (Jessica Barden, in a reserved but vivid performance) wants more than the apex this place has to offer. She's smart, in terms of reading and numbers and understanding people. She's kind, as in she's willing to aid a former classmate and new mother who needs help getting her GED without wanting money in return, but Ruth is also practical, in that she won't refuse the money her friend is offering. She has known a lot of pain and disappointment, even though she hasn't seen or experienced anything beyond the borders of this town.

It once thrived in industry, and maybe Ruth could have thrived back then, too. Instead, she, her older brother Blaze (Gus Halper), and everyone else here just listens to the empty promises of the President of the time, saying that jobs are coming back to these places. All the locals see are still-abandoned factories, layoffs, drug addictions leading to prison sentences, shut-off water faucets, and eviction notices.

The central question of Riegel's film isn't why Ruth doesn't leave. It's a matter of what and who are keeping her in this town, as well as whether or not the unknowns of a future outside this place are worth the cost of leaving. Here, she has a family, albeit a broken one. Her mother Rhonda (Pamela Adlon) is currently in county lockup after an addiction to pain medication (prescribed freely after a work-place injury) sent her down a wrong path. She's waiting to be released, to be sent to a rehabilitation facility, or both.

Blaze has been looking out for and after Ruth since all that, and as much as the teenage girl wants to go to college, she can't repay her brother's care by abandoning him. The brother wants her to go, even sending Ruth's college application without her knowing it and paying for the fee with money that could have gone toward the water bill.

He knows there's nothing here for her. Blaze works at the only factory in town still operating, but the pay isn't enough to keep up with the bills or the mortgage. He and Ruth make some additional cash by stealing aluminum cans and other recyclables from the neighbors' garbage, bringing the haul to a local junkyard run by Hark (Austin Amelio).

The self-made business man, a military veteran who went from not being able to find work to watching his job disappear, might be the most successful person in town. His success, though, comes from breaking in to those empty factories, stripping the facilities of the precious metals, and selling the stolen goods to a middleman who represents companies in China. One could say there's a bit of hypocrisy on the part of Hark, who rails against American jobs being outsourced to other countries, but that would be pointless. Consistent opinions and values, after all, don't pay the bills.

The minimal plot has Ruth and Blaze taking jobs with Hark, who promises a place to live, a lot of steady work, and pay that will exceed anything else they could receive from legitimate employment. The two, along with the rest of Hark's team, scrap the factories, get cash to spend or—for the possibility of Ruth going to college—save, and finally start to feel more comfortable than they have in a long time. Their bigger problems, like the fate of the family, remain, and some new ones, such as the fact that other illegal operations like Hark's exist, emerge.

This is the basic setup of Riegel's film, which tells a very simple story but invests it with a strong sense of place, character, and an ever-increasing feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. It's timely, as such stories about the erosion of the industrial sector of the United States have been for decades now, but the film's goals aren't political. This is happening, as it has happened and likely will continue to happen for the foreseeable future (Cinematographer Dustin Lane, shooting on the richly tactile format of 16 mm, gives the film the look of a decades-old photograph, as if nothing has changed since then). Riegel remains focused on the personal cost of this situation, as well as the ways in which it has changed how people think about what a "good," "successful" life is.

There are obstacles, in other words, but all of them feel natural to this situation, just as the barriers keeping these characters in place feel specific to them. Even though the ending rushes toward a possibly optimistic conclusion, Holler works as a study of the psychology of poverty and complacency.

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