The Evening Hour

Narrative bumps and all, The Evening Hour gives Ettinger a full stage to parade his unassuming virtuosity.

The Evening Hour may lean into stereotypes of Appalachia and the lawless dead end many find themselves driving into. But King, working from Elizabeth Palmore’s script, humanizes the character “types” and the “statistics” to make one of the more compelling dramas set in this world and its struggles.

King works to portray a tight mesh of relationships around Cole, directing Elizabeth Palmore’s valiant adaptation of the sensitively rendered Carter Sickels novel. But lacking a strong central performance from Ettinger — who gets stuck on a half-pained, half-exasperated setting — much of the movie feels like a series of comings and goings, entrances and exits.

Unfortunately, The Evening Hour falls back on clichés, telling its story with a palpable sense of distance from the characters, from their struggles, and from the world they inhabit.

In spite of the film’s strikingly lived-in sense of place, the script’s melodramatic storytelling works against that verisimilitude.