Final Cut

Starred review from June 15, 2020
Award-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Young, the narrator of this outstanding psychological thriller from Watson (Before I Sleep), needs a new assignment to keep her career’s momentum. But Alex isn’t enthusiastic when her producer receives an unsigned postcard urging her to go Blackwood Bay, a small English town that was the site of smuggling operations centuries ago. The job is to document daily life in Blackwood Bay. As town residents send their own videos to Alex, she’s more interested in the disappearances of three teenage girls over the past decade. It’s not the project that Alex dreads, but dredging up lost memories, since Alex believes she’s one of those girls. She has no idea why she fled—perhaps because she was in danger. Having changed her looks, Alex digs into the girls’ backgrounds while keeping her identity secret and trying to remember which of the residents she might have known. A tight, brisk plot drives this sharp character study. Watson perfectly capture small town ennui while illustrating how corruption can hide in plain sight. Agent: Clare Conville, Conville & Walsh (U.K.).