Blow The Man Down 4 stars☆☆☆☆☆

Teenage sisters Mary Beth and Priscilla Connolly, who have recently lost their mother, attempt to cover up a gruesome run-in with a dangerous man. To conceal their crime, they must go deeper into Easter Cove’s underbelly and uncover the town matriarchs’ darkest secrets.

In this clever, layered thriller, the three older ladies of Easter Cove turn the village busybody trope on its head.

Gail, Susie and Doreen may look like gossips with nothing better to do – usually in a film about murders they’d be investigating the crime in their gardening gloves, ear-wigging from behind their wisteria – but in Blow The Man Down they’re the self-appointed chilly core of this isolated Maine fishing village.

The men of the town, apart from the two local cops, are either away on the boats, retired and drinking cups of tea in shadowy silence (or in the case of Gorski, dead in the harbour – bumped off by teenager Mary Beth after he tries to assault her).

The women are certainly more on the ball than those cops: one older and accepting of the charms offered by the ladies of village brothel Ocean View, one younger and able to see at least some of the bigger picture, as the consequences of a body surfacing in the harbour ripple outwards.

Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor) and her more level-headed older sibling Priscilla (Sophie Lowe), on their own and in debt after the death of their mother Mary Margaret, are trying to cope but screwing up along the way, losing an incriminating weapon and finding a mysterious bag of cash.

Then there’s local brothel owner Enid Nora (all these double names), who turns out to be more complicated than the usual hard-nosed but warm-hearted madam.

Mary Beth is stifled, and desperate to escape to college. The local bar has to do as a poor substitute, but a trip there ends in disaster when she meets Gorski, who soon ends up dead.

Cramming him into an old fridge, she and Priscilla chuck him into the freezing sea. A body washes up in the harbour later. It’s not Gorski though but Dee, a young local woman.

That’s two mysteries straight off, though Gorski, while missed, is not mourned as much was you’d expect. Dee is mourned more than she probably expected; her friend Alexis (Gayle Rankin) is devastated.

The town is chilly but sunny. Houses and businesses exude scruffy local charm with their blue, grey and white painted boards. It’s a look that has been smoothed over and smartened up then sold to us around the world.

It’s still beautiful, with the sun streaming through the sparkling cold; no one ventures outside without a padded coat and a woolly hat, while indoors they eat pie and cake over proper cups of tea.

As is often the case though, living in a seaside postcard requires more pragmatism from its inhabitants than the glossy version implies; circumstances need to be managed rather than painted over.

And Gail (Annette O’Toole), Susie (June Squibb) and Doreen (Marceline Hugot) are not happy with the continued presence of Ocean View, its faded grandeur a monument to tattered dreams and diminishing returns.

They have already decided it’s time for it to close and started pressuring Enid Nora (Margo Martindale). She meanwhile, without friend and partial supporter Mary Margaret, turns out to be the kind of woman who when cornered will fight back as dirtily as she needs.

The history of the town is gradually revealed along with the parts many of the women have played.

In a way this is a (rather brutal) coming-of-age story, with the Connolly sisters (they’re barely seen by others as individuals despite being very different in looks and personality) finding out the rounded humanity of their mother. Shock mixes with grief and anger at what she has and hasn’t left them with.

Characters are nuanced and often conflicted, claiming to act for one reason while really it’s another. Everyone is telling lies to themselves as older lies come back to haunt them.

The relationships between all these women, who’ve known each other for ever, ebb and flow like the tide: having each other’s backs, or pitted against each other, friendships cracking and mending, the glued joins increasingly visible.

All of them are what we like to call complex (though as I’ve said before, are they really that complicated or simply not one-dimensional?)

This is a chilly and tight thriller, confidently crafted by writer-directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy.

At times blackly comic, the score has shades of the Twilight Zone and also isn’t averse to cheerily announcing some trouble. Sea shanty Blow The Man Down is sung several times, an example of the oral storytelling traditions of these areas, in a town where it’s what hasn’t been spoken of for so long that comes to the surface.

Fishing villages are used to storms and tragedies that have to be endured and situations that have to be controlled. Sympathies move from one to another.

The performances are terrific. Lowe and Saylor are particularly skilled at portraying the conflicted feelings and abilities of teenagers, unbowed by guilt and the passage of time, while still scared, out of their depth and with no one to talk to.

But Martindale steals the show: gloriously ambiguous, she edges between firm but fair madam and wicked exploiter, until we find out who Enid Nora really is and what her limits are.

Watch the trailer now:

A couple of spoilers below…

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Mary Beth and Priscilla return the money to Enid Nora, in exchange for their knife. Enid Nora seems conciliatory, and offers them some of the cash – she tells them she was very close to their mother, who left her business for Mary Beth and Priscilla. They refuse the money, Enid becomes angry. They leave with their knife, and Alexis comes in and smothers Enid Nora. Alexis leaves with the bag of cash, driving away with Tanya, who worked at Ocean View with her.

Later the sisters see Susie cleaning out the fridge they used to dispose of Gorski’s body, and the three of them exchange “knowing looks” and smiles.