'I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE' REVIEW......SUNDANCE-ING AS FAST AS THEY CAN....

I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore (2017) flies its Independent Film freak flag so high that it starts to feel like a clever parody of a Sundance Festival movie instead of the real thing....which it is. After its opening mumblecore slice-of-dreary-life scenes, it quickly whirls and twirls itself into blood-soaked Tarantino-Land, liberally littered with odious thugs itching for random agonizing death.

             In its deliberately absurd body count, it resembles the avalanche of faux-Tarantino cheeky bloodbaths that flooded the market following the debut of 'Pulp Fiction'. Unlike those movies, though, nobody in 'I Don't Feel At Home..." exchanges snappy pop culture references prior to blowing each other's brains out.  This movie prefers to quietly march to its own internal drummer,
since its two lead characters are barely articulate introverts.  The overall effect plays like a Coen Brothers and Tarantino mixture not left in the blender long enough to get the lumps out.

             Nurse's aide  Ruth (Melanie Lynskey), a gentle soul, complacently bobs along in an everyday sea of assholes.....people who cut in front of her at the supermarket checkout line, people who let their dogs shit on her lawn, a guy who thoughtlessly blurts out the stunning surprise ending of the book she's reading. Lynskey excels at this kind of subtle, reactive acting and she's endlessly watchable. Her character finally reaches the 'I'm mad as hell' tipping point when her house is robbed and the police indifferently shrug off any real effort to recover her stuff..... her laptop and her grandmother's silverware.

             Determined to take action, Ruth enlists the aid of Tony (Elijah Wood), the neighbor whose dog soiled her yard. A fellow lost soul, Tony's eccentricities have rendered him even more cut off from normal society than Ruth, But in joining her quest to hunt down the people who invaded her home, he at last sees an outlet to release his pent up rage and use all the ninja weapons he practices with daily.

             And here's where the movie takes the curving Tarantino offramp......Ruth and Tony's search inevitably leads them to an obnoxious one-percenter's mansion and a confrontation with the disturbingly vile trio of thugs who robbed Ruth's house. (One of film's best features: the music and choral accompaniment heave and moan at the introduction of these three scumbags.....as if they've freshly arrived from the bowels of hell itself....)

             Melanie Lynskey's the whole show, really. Whether faced with simple bad behavior or rampaging evil, she struggles to keep a firm grip on her humanity and always maintains her moral compass.......she's like Alice wandering through a Wonderland where the Mad Hatter,March Hare and Red Queen wield shotguns and knives. Lynskey's work genuinely engages you, even when you think the film might be putting you on when it gleefully splashes around the gore.

             We're certain that "I Don't Feel At Home..." must come across as startlingly fresh to anyone who didn't suffer through all those 1990's 'Pulp Fiction' knockoffs.....but on the other hand we don't remember if any of them benefited  from as fine-tuned an actress as Lynskey. For her remarkable work (and a shout out to Christine Woods for her hysterical turn as a clueless trophy wife caught in the chaos) the BQ Independent Film Festival awards  3 stars (***)