All Creatures Here Below is a 2019 drama about a desperate young couple on the run who seek refuge in Kansas City.
Desperation leads us to the worst places, and in these moments choices can be all that’s left in living or dying. Such is the premise behind director Collin Schiffli‘s latest gritty film All Creatures Here Below, a daunting story of two figures on the run that is very well-written and performed, oppressively bleak and hopeless, making it both a hard but affecting watch. This is a film that thrives in its harrowing personalities, even when it doesn’t always feel consistently sure where its bringing them.
In Los Angeles, Gensan (David Dastmalchian) is struggling to make ends meet in the kitchen of a pizza joint while his girl Ruby (Karen Gillan) has already be released from her work as a church cleaning woman. It’s not easy, the couple forced to scrounge for scraps on the street where they can, trying to find some hope for their futures. But the worst happens when Gensan is also let go, using the last of his small wages on a gamble that goes bad, stealing money and car. He picks up Ruby, who, in her own state of delusion, snatches a neighbor’s baby and the two head east as consequences follow.
Written by Dastmalchian, for his feature length film debut, All Creatures Here Below is a dark tale that grows heavier the more it heads across country as the couple find they are ill-equipped in a number of ways to fend for themselves and take care of an infant. Ruby, who is set up as one with a history of maternal issues, is as impulsive as Gensan, and the two find only mounting hurdles and roadblocks in their attempt to find the American Dream. That is fades farther into the horizon as they speed toward it remains its most powerful message.
Limited by its small budget, the filmmakers wisely keep this focused on the immediate surroundings of Ruby and Gensan, their urgency to keep alive well-mounted throughout with both Dastmalchian and Gillan heating this up with raw performances. Ruby and Gensan are survivors, bound to poverty and great personal need, and these actors give these characters tremendous weight in keeping that right in our face throughout. It’s tough to watch. Look also for comedian David Koechner in a surprisingly, albeit brief, impactful turn as well.
Part roadtrip part manhunt, All Creatures Here Below isn’t a black comedy as its root might suggest, but rather an often moving account of misery gone awry, building up several good moments between these troubled people that are not always easy to absorb. As such, committed to its hopelessness, it travels us to bitter ends and perhaps – aligned with the fates of Ruby and Gensan – grander visions of a failed Americana. It’s not entirely a convincing parable, even with so much about it that stings like it hopes to, but All Creatures Here Below makes for a curiously distressing odyssey that surely many will find some connection.