Arnold’s first feature is post-9/11 cinema that teeters on the edge of the precipice, a brilliant mystery-thriller with dark shades of early Haneke as a CCTV operator chances upon a face that she least expects to see.  

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This review is of the uncut version.

I first discovered Andrea Arnold through Fish Tank (2009), her sophomore feature, which was, to me, one of the films of the decade. 

Here, in her feature debut, the mysteriously-titled Red Road, she announced herself as a directorial force to be reckoned with.  Like Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, 1999) before her, Arnold hasn’t made many films but continues to be a festival magnet with each new work. 

Red Road was a marker of its time, made a few years after 9/11 changed how we lived—a new world characterised by a heightened sense of surveillance and the constant alert for suspicious persons. 

Jackie (Kate Dickie) works shifts as a CCTV operator.  Almost Rear Window-esque, she scans multiple screens like a hawk, zooming in on certain people. 

Some are familiar, comforting faces to her like an old man who walks his dog every evening, but she is more interested in spotting shady loners who may be moments away from being exploited or assaulted. 

“Why do I have this feeling that I have met you before?”

Nothing, however, prepares her for when she chances upon a face that she least expects to see, and this sets up a brilliant mystery-thriller that goes into rather dark, some might say, perverse territory. 

But if you enjoy cinema that teeters on the edge of the precipice, surrender yourself to Arnold’s exceptional craft as she takes us deep into the gritty Glasgow suburbs of shophouses and high-rise apartments. 

Her camera, documentary-like, presents us with a sense of immediacy—and hence, palpable danger for Jackie.  Tonally, there is always a feeling of something sinister lurking outside of the frame, and it is precisely this tone that takes Arnold’s narrative headfirst into the abyss. 

A tale of self-agency, poetic justice and redemption, Red Road has shades of early Michael Haneke, but Arnold’s filmmaking is rarely as cold and austere as the Austrian auteur’s.

Grade: A-

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