Walking blindly into a film is a rare opportunity nowadays, given how almost all films are heavily promoted, and it’s difficult to avoid the trailers that accompany the release of films, whether emanating from Hollywood or dropping on our streaming platforms. Here are two crime stories I ‘blindly’ enjoyed - one can be watched in cinemas, while the second is available on Netflix.

Strange Darling - Written and directed by JT Mollner and shot entirely on 35mm, this film has a gritty, lo-fi quality that had me thinking back to early Tarantino and the found footage films that became so popular way back when. In terms of storytelling, it purports to be about the true crime case of a serial killer and offers the story in six chapters. But the wonderful thing Mollner does is jumble up the six parts so we’re led to expect and anticipate something, and then have those storylines blow up in our faces as we learn what happened in some preceding chronological chapter - which was exposed to later on in the film. It’s a subversive approach, reminiscent of Christopher Nolan’s Memento, but this time chronicling the last days of a serial killer.

Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner portray the main characters, and they both invest in their respective five characters admirably. While Will Fitzgerald has caught the eyes of most of the film critics and reviewers, and they extol the work she does here, I’m personally just as impressed with Kyle Gallner as The Devil, as there’s a subdued, stoic quality that works well and helps us build our mental storyline, just to have been overhauled and subverted. The even more delicious irony for me is how Miramax produces this film, and if I didn’t know better, I could see this film as a veiled response to the #MeToo movement centered on exposing Mr. Harvey W. of Miramax. Go into this film blind and be taken in by the humor, the earthy dialogue, and the crime elements. Not for the squeamish!

Rebel Ridge - This film project of Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin and Green Room) was initially cast with John Boyega in mind as the lead character. That would work, but I also like the relative anonymity Aaron Pierce brings to the role and how it’s more effective. Pierce is Terry Richmond, an ex-Marine, biking into a little Southern town to spring his cousin from jail with bail money. On the outskirts of the town, he’s driven off the road by a police cruiser and shaken down by the locals. It seems it’s a systematic way of raising local funds by the town police chief, Chief Sandy (Don Johnson, and yes, it’s that Miami Vice Johnson, now playing a dirty, corrupt police chief). In the town, it’s only a legal aide/clerk named Summer who’s ready to help Terry address the injustice.

There’s a modern take on Shane in this Southern, modern-day Western. It’s telling that Terry is African-American, making it so much more real that he would be picked on in this kind of scenario. Things get very complicated as Terry uses his hand-to-hand combat skills and Marine training, and the town’s police force realizes that they may have bitten off more than they can chew. They pick on Summer, and her subsequent plight drives Terry over the edge in terms of retaliation. There’s a strong lone wolf quality to how the story unfolds, but what Saulnier effectively does is keep us on edge make his main characters resonate. Hence, we care and set a good pace so that even if we look back and realize it may be overlong, we don’t feel that. It's a good thing Netflix salvaged this Saulnier film!