Movie Review: Regionrat (2018) Suffers From Identity Crisis

**The following review for Regionrat is spoiler free.**

I hail from Sanford, North Carolina. To the passersby heading into larger cities such as Raleigh or Fayetteville, we’re a simple, small town in the center of the state. They’re surely aware that there’s no real excitement happening here in Sanford, save for the destructive tornado that made national news back in 2011, or the Starbucks that we finally got last year. To most, we’re nothing more than a rearview city.

Lucky them.

As for everyone that lives here, though, we know the truth about our town. See, aside from late night visits to Walmart, there isn’t really much to do in Sanford other than stay home and mind your business, or get involved with the wrong kind of time-wasting activities. That activity is usually drug-related, unfortunately. Sanford is a downward spiral waiting to happen, and one you can’t escape from.

In Regionrat, a film that premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, we’re introduced to Ray, who had actually escaped a similar town, only to fall upon hard times and be forced back home. When Ray returns to his lowlife city, known by its inhabitants as “The Region,” he hooks up with familiar faces and falls into the vise of old, troubling habits. The film proceeds to showcase the many ups and downs that come from being young and impressionable in a black hole of a town, and takes Ray on a journey of self-discovery while doing so.

Unfortunately, while Regionrat crafts a surface-level experience that will surely be relatable for anyone that lives in a town such as the one depicted, the way in which the material is handled botches any emotional resonance and renders the drama ineffective. Accompanied by a light, happy score and an underhanded optimism even in the darkest moments of the film, it’s difficult to register how it is that director Javier Reyna wants you to feel. Many of the awful experiences that Ray goes through seem to be played for comedy, building in a snowball effect that ups the ante of what else could possibly go wrong. Even with its noticeably low budget and hit-or-miss performances, there is enough angsty material for viewers to connect to, had the filmmaker only known how to establish that connection.

That’s not to say that all of Regionrat is a disaster, however. While I wasn’t a fan of Reyna’s direction as a whole, there are a few moments when the director framed a shot in way that lends to his potential as a filmmaker, even if that potential was barely touched upon throughout this particular film. The performance by Connor Williams as Ray also grows on you throughout the film’s runtime. His acting showcase may lack dramatic heft, and certainly isn’t without its flaws, but Williams manages to concoct a realism in his performance that will lead you to believe that he actually is from a small, shitty, disastrous town.

These things, however, are not enough to save the total Regionrat experience. If you want the real thing, just come to Sanford. But, like the film in question, you’re much better off without it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5KS7ogXaAI