Back Roads

Back Roads

Undeniably ambitious but undeniably raw, Alex Pettyfer’s directorial debut “Back Roads” is a movie that burdens itself with drama. After their mother (Juliette Lewis) shoots and kills their abusive father, Harley (Pettyfer) gives up going to college to take care of his three sisters in rural Pennsylvania. Among sexual abuse, violence, tragedy and pressure, Harley spirals downward but finds addictive solace in the arms of a neglected housewife (Jennifer Morrison) down the road.

“Back Roads” wallows in its characters’ pain, almost sadistically so. Tawni O’Dell, who wrote the source novel and screenplay for this adaptation, piles one tragedy on top of another screaming match until it becomes numbing. Not all tearful screaming sessions can be translated from page to screen successfully this is an excruciating example of overkill.

The movie begins by awkwardly spelling out a brief history of Harley’s dysfunctional family. The first time we see him he’s tear-stained and bloody-nosed why won’t make sense until the end of the movie. Through many rounds of family in-fighting throughout the film, details slowly slip out that point to a kind of cyclical violence where abuse begets more abuse. But without any lulls from bleakness in story or grimness in cinematography, “Back Roads” doesn’t lead us anywhere other than further into despair.

While these dark family dynamics may remind viewers of “Winter’s Bone” or this summer’s much-discussed miniseries “Sharp Objects,” at least those movies gave us characters beyond their conflicts with each other.

Jennifer Lawrence gave her Ree Dolly headstrong determination to save her family despite impossible circumstances; Amy Adams surprised “Sharp Objects” audiences with her vulnerable performance as an alcoholic journalist who’s returned home for a grisly story while being forced to confront her inner demons. Pettyfer never explores Harley or any other character in this movie beyond damaged a wounded animal slowly sinking below the surface of a deep depression, resisting any help extended his way.

Harley’s affair with his married neighbor is the stuff of a half-finished romance novel. Of course he falls recklessly in love with an older woman who offers free sexual healing. The bad romance seems like it was supposed to show just how traumatized our leading man is after feeling that his mother abandoned their family, but it comes across as a clichéd subplot.

And the underdevelopment doesn’t stop with the doomed fling it extends to Harley’s eldest sister, Amber (Nicola Peltz), who acts like a feral child and screams at him for various trivial reasons throughout the movie. She’s barely there as a character, only as chaos.

When done well, movies like these can play out like page turning mysteries. We’re gripped by a kind of gossipy voyeurism that allows us to watch disaster play out from afar within dysfunctional families on screen. But something about “Back Roads” feels unsatisfying.

Maybe it’s poverty porn that’s too familiar or too mean spirited; maybe it’s lazy Harlequin twists that don’t amount to much or characters who never reveal enough of themselves for us to become interested in them. The film is almost nihilistic in spirit but tasteless enough to tack on the statistic about rates of sexual assault against children at the end.

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