Boy, I really wanted to like this one.

There’s so much in its favor: a dark, nihilistic social landscape reminiscent of what you’d find in the books of Jim Thompson. Skilled actors, especially the young protagonist played by Jack Dylan Grazer, and the possible antagonist played by Rainn Wilson. A plot centered around an excruciating moral dilemma. (I loves me a juicy moral dilemma!)

But it just doesn’t quite land for reasons I’ll get into in a jiff.

We start off meeting Matt and Joey, two brothers living in a poverty-stricken Midwest hellscape. Their dad died last year and mom, played by Mena Suvari (knowing Mena Suvari is playing mom characters makes me feel old), has got the cancer. There’s not much for kids to do around here but fight, drink, and screw.

Matt talks Joey into stealing some cash from a neighbor’s house. Unfortunately, they are immediately spotted and chased by a security guard. Fortunately, said guard falls down an abandoned well in a secluded area. Matt is content to let him rot, but guilt ridden Joey  returns to the well and starts up a friendship with the guard.

From there, the plot builds into one moral transgression after another. Characters surprise you in their willingness to embrace the dark side. And the man in the well may not be what he seems.

There’s a lot like, but there’s a lot that just doesn’t make much sense according to the laws of human behavior.. For example, why doesn’t guilty Joey just make an anonymous call to the cops about the man in the well? Also, a lot of people in the film hand other people guns when they clearly shouldn’t. And, at the end, when a bad character turns soft, it just makes no sense.

It may be worth watching the movie for the acting alone. And to enjoy the grim, Midwest vibe that was a nice throwback to the eighties movies based on the books of S.E. Hinton: The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, etc.

But I really wish they had made this work better. It could have been something really special.