Nobody else is doing what Mark Jenkin is doing. Over three features the Cornist director has established himself as a singular auteur, and his newest, “Rose of Nevada,” is, in many ways, just more of the same. His particular brand of avant-garde, genre work is, at least from the outside, basically irresistible to anybody who loves cult cinema. His latest, shot on 16mm with all the audio recorded in post-production, is a drone-y folk tale with a lot on its mind and sound mix so loud my ears were still ringing four hours later.
There are walkouts at every film of his I have attended, usually exactly 10 minutes in when they realize the whole thing is gonna just be “like that.” This is amusing but understandable; in an era where commodity fetishism has turned analog, low-budget cinema into something aspirational, Jenkin has made no compromises for accessibility. None of this is a marketable aesthetic to him; It is the essence of his work, like a callous atop the celluloid print. There is a sense that he makes films in Cornwall with a consistent stable of artists not to build a personal brand, but because there is nowhere else he could find better rust, better moss, or stronger wind. He is not using the frenzied intensity of Jerzy Skolimowszki or Takashi Ito as a moodboard; these are the fundamentals of his cinematic language.
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“Rose of Nevada” is the most heavily plotted of his films, though that’s grading on a pretty steep curve. It’s a story that could fit comfortably in a classic “Twilight Zone” episode. 30 years ago, the eponymous fishing boat disappeared after going out to sea shorthanded. With it went an entire coastal town’s economy, and the sole surviving deckhands, the one who stayed ashore, threw himself off a cliff. Now, the vessel has magically reappeared at the rundown harbor. Two men — drunk named Liam, played by Callum Turner, and a family man named Nick, played by George Mackay — unaware of the vessel’s past, are hired by the families of the deceased crew to go out once more. Upon their return, they find themselves sent into the past, having assumed the roles of the two men who were lost before.
The narrative, though sparse, is an excellent scaffold for Jenkin. For the first time, he has made a feature that does not slack or stall in its efforts to justify its runtime. The methodical cacophony of the boat and the temporal collapse of the town clarify his project. Liam, once aimless and unhoused, quickly finds purpose in the charade as a husband and father. Nick, desperate to return to the present, shirks the doting parents and brother who long to comfort him. The extent to which anybody else is aware of the time-loop is ambiguous; the ship’s skipper is an elderly man with no memory of his name, and at times it’s implied that the town has deliberately trapped these men.
That sense of spiritual imprisonment may have another explanation. When a net breaks in a storm, a dozen or so dock workers rush to shore to stitch it up. When Nick asks, terrified, why they’re all so eager, his so-called brother shouts because “We’re a community,” like it’s a threat. The skipper says “For every man at sea, there are five men at home relying on you.” The spirits of these men are not just being exploited; their labor is as well. Nick and Liam lose not just their future, but their identity. They are resigned to a life where they are always, in some way, at work.
The film’s opening finds the town deindustrialized and full of ghosts. Back in the 90s, videos about computer chips and global warming serve as oracles. “It’s not too late yet,” reads one such ad. This is not merely a story about grief and memory, it is concerned with the manner in which the world is sacrificing our future and ourselves in pursuit of some prelapsarian, conservative ideal. The subtle revelation of time-warped quasi-incest between Liam and the girl he goes on to raise as his daughter is one of many signs that this world is profoundly sick.
It is here that Jenkin’s obsession with the textures of his own work reveal their purpose. Moreso than in previous work, he highlights the dissonance between his subject matter and his form. This is a film shot with nearly century-old methods, featuring contemporary pop songs and iPhones. When we see the town for the second time, the camera latches onto foregone technologies, jukeboxes and old-school CCTVs and stick-shift trucks. It’d be disingenuous to say this movie is not enamored with its own schtick, but it is far and away his least indulgent. Jenkins calls into question our relationship to objects of nostalgia and how we rememorize the textures of history across our lives.
Still, none of this would work if it were not viscerally, addictively watchable. There is something sinister in the transportive and borderline-cozy atmosphere of “Rose of Nevada.” The viewer grows used to the thunderous sound of fish hitting the floor or the chipped paint on the ice valve Ominous shots of fish guts explode with composition lines that edit slickly into the metal beams of the dock. The presumably lo-fi SFX create legitimate spectacle; I have no idea how they pulled off a simple shot of George Mackay’s face watching a storm roll in at blistering speed. There is greater focus on manufactured materials in this as compared to his previous work, though that does not mean the movie lacks stunning vistas or his iconic cropped close-ups, with pores shimmering through the film stock.
Mackay and Turner are both excellent, two movie stars who seem totally game to be asked to move with real gruffness. The intrusion of these two men takes almost a metatextual dimension, two celebrities isekai’d into a regional, experimental tradition. The self-reflexive qualities of the work go further, and the film can surely be read as a statement about the limits and possibilities of a totally analogue and backwards-gazing practice. But “Rose of Nevada” is too slippery to every fully be nailed down. I do wish Liam’s newfound purpose was given as much space as Nick’s desperate attempts to flee the town, though in a way, that would be asking for a different film entirely. You can imagine this same story, recounted by a dozen people, each with a different emphasis and minor post-production tweaks. In that way, “Rose of Nevada” feels like a folk tale. It is the kind of movie that I would half-expect to have an entirely different ending each time I see it.
“Rose of Nevada” does not abandon or anonymize any of Jenkin’s hallmark quirks, and is thus unlikely to convert any agnostics. But for the faithful and the curious, here is a work of hypnotically accomplished form and legitimate depth.
Grade: B+
“Rose of Nevada” premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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