Ashgrove (2022)

Try as I did, I just couldn't get into this film. "Jennifer" (Amanda Brugel) is a top scientist trying (pretty much single handedly, it appears) to save the population from a water toxicity issue that could wipe us all out in five years. She leaves their rural farmhouse suddenly claiming she has the solution, then something happens? What? Well that's what the next seventy minutes try to explain to us, but I found the whole thing so contrived and far-fetched as to beggar belief. Basically, her bosses are concerned for her mental health given all the strain this researching has put her under, so tell her to take a weekend off with husband "Jason" (Jonas Chernick) so she can recuperate. Clearly their marital relationship has been under pressure too, and some of the plot focusses on that and on their visiting friends "Elliot" (Shawn Doyle) and his pregnant wife "Sammy" (Natalie Brown) who add some more domestic melodrama to this otherwise really lacklustre story. The dialogue is really poorly written, the interaction between these people would have to have you question what on Earth they could ever have seen in each other in the first place. Despite the merits of her scientific work, "Jennifer" came across as a complete pain in the neck and he, well he's just a drip! I believe it was the World Premier of this film that I saw at the Glasgow Film festival - not one of my better choices, sorry,