A
surprisingly intriguing, meticulously paced thriller with no easy
answers that is far more saddening, if not disturbing, than its at times
implausible narrative would have allowed, were the film not so well
directed and graced with some nicely nuanced performances, particularly
the unexpected one from Camila Mendes, whose rooted performance displays
a depth and versatility sorely lacking from her non-acting turn in her
later thriller, Dangerous Lies (2020 / trailer).
The
fictional titular Coyote Lake is an out-of-the-way body of water
located in a sparsely populated section of the Tex-Mex border, where
seventeen-year-old Ester (Mendes) lives with her mother Teresa (Adriana
Barraza of Bingo Hell
[2021]). They rent rooms to passing travelers, and an early
kitchen-meal scene in which a lodger explains the ins and out of work
requiring traveling, and of not having a fixed home, the wide-eyed
innocence of an enthralled Teresa, who dreams of one day leaving the
remote family home with her mother, plays well against the worldly,
almost deviously aggressive eyes of the lodger.
Trailer to
Coyote Lake:
But
as the film's opening scene of a plastic-wrapped body beneath waters
forebodes, it is not the women who are in mortal danger: the boarding
house that widowed Teresa and her daughter run, assisted by the
stereotypical character of the simpleminded deaf-mute handyman Dirk
(Neil Sandilands of London Calling [2025 / trailer], The Surrender [2025 / trailer], Slay [2024 / trailer]
and a lot more), is pretty much a poverty-level Hotel California: the
drug dealers and human traffickers that check in, never check out. A
major crimp in the well-oiled if simple operation of the mother-daughter
duo arrives, however, in the form of the unexpected appearance of two
Mexican drug-runners, Paco (Andres Velez of You Can't Run Forever [2024 / trailer]) and Ignacio (Manny Perez of Separation [2021 / trailer]),
one of whom has inexplicably been shot in the leg. They take refuge at
gun point, even as the latest drugged man lies passed out in his rented
room upstairs.
The
troubled Paco, who like Esther only wants the best for his family, is
not much older than the oddly innocent-of-the-world Esther. And as
hormones will be hormones, an attraction slowly brews. Soon, after a
truly uncomfortable "seduction" scene with discrete semi-nudity — the
film falls back upon the trope of non-violent semi-rape not truly being
rape since both people want it — the carefully maintained world of the
mother and daughter begins to hobble and wobble. But Teresa has no
intention of letting her daughter go, of giving Esther the freedom and
different life that Esther thinks they are saving all the illicit money
for: like the mother in Sonata (2004), Teresa has controlled every aspect of Esther's life since birth to mould and shape her, but unlike the mother in Sonata, Teresa's goal was never to make a genius artist but, rather, to simply create unbreakable ties that bind.
The
basic boarding-house-of-death plot point is one seen before — for a
truly twisted take on it, the classic slab of Ozploitation that is Inn of the Damned (1975 / trailer) is hard to beat, while a far more funny take is found in the French film L'auberge rouge a.k.a. The Red Inn (1951 / trailer) — if not one that has similarly comparable and far more violent real-life historical precedents. (Anyone remember the Bloody Benders or the Kelly Family?) Coyote Lake,
in any event, has all the ingredients needed for a truly sleazy
exploitation flick, but director Sera Seligman, making her directorial
debut with a co-scripted, independent movie apparently made for
television (HBO), has little interest in the exploitive, even if she
isn't always nice. There is violence, expected and unexpected, but it
hardly as shocking or gratuitous as it is punctually necessary to the
unglamorous, heartless, and ultimately tragic story.
Seligman,
and thus her film, is far more interested in the humans of her drama
cum thriller, and despite the roster of stock characters and situations
her film employs, she does a good job at fleshing out the people,
relationships, and situations to cast light on the story beneath, ably
assisted by some subtle but effective acting on the part of her cast.
Paco is more than just a drug runner, and the young, sheltered, and
naive Ester is more than just a killer. Indeed, it doesn't take long for
one to figure out that she, too, is a victim: the she has been shaped
and controlled by her manipulative, narcissist, and immensely
hypocritical mother from hell who has long convinced her unnaturally
sheltered daughter that what they are doing is not bad because by
getting rid of "bad people" they are improving the world.
Coyote Lake
is a surprisingly quiet film, with but a few scenes involving blood and
brutality. But for that, the matter of factualness of the events is
unnerving, and the emotional violence deep and brutal. Coyote Lake is
not a movie to offer false hopes, and the possibly predictable but open
ending is hardly a feel-good one. Flawed by its overuse of familiar
tropes, the movie is nevertheless very well made and well acted, which
goes a long way to adding depth to the events and making Coyote Lake so involving and, ultimately, emotionally moving. A commendable feature-film directorial debut, to say the least.
