Rose of Nevada (2025) – Film Review

Director: Mark Jenkin
Cast: George MacKay, Callum Turner, Emily Daglish-Laine
Certificate: 15

By Sarah Morgan

We’re living in an age in which Hollywood big budget blockbusters are churned out 50 to the dozen, as if they’re created via a factory production line and in which spectacle is far more important than story.

So it’s rather wonderful when you discover a film-maker who is shunning all that, ploughing their own unique furrow instead and creating truly original works.

Mark Jenkin is one such person. The Cornish writer, producer and director shoots all his movies on a 16mm Bolex camera with a clockwork mechanism that runs for a maximum of 27 seconds at a time before it needs rewinding. It also cannot record audio, so sound has to be added in post-production, giving everything a slightly surreal feel.

His 2019 drama Bait, about a struggling Cornish fisherman, was a huge critical hit. He followed that with 2022’s equally impressive Enys Men, a decidedly unnerving tale of a wildlife volunteer whose sojourn on a lonely island turns into a nightmare.

“Disturbed”

Rose of Nevada is Jenkins’ biggest offering to date and, along with Bait and Enys Men, forms his Cornish trilogy.

Callum Turner and George MacKay, two of British cinema’s most impressive young stars (Turner is apparently in the running to be the next James Bond), head the cast as Liam and Nick, two young men who take jobs aboard the Rose of Nevada, a fishing trawler that disappeared 30 years ago, only to mysteriously wash up back at its home port, seemingly unharmed but empty.

Neither have much experience of life at sea, but are taken under the wing of Captain Murgey, and have a successful first trip. However, on their return, they arrive not in the 21st century, but three decades earlier, ahead of the boat’s disappearance.

Everyone they know is much younger, but accept them completely – albeit under different names. Although initially disturbed by the situation, Liam eventually settles down, enjoying family life with a woman who clearly believes he’s her partner, and a little girl she claims is their daughter.

However Nick, who had a wife and child in the present day, struggles to deal with the situation, desperate to return to his real time and place.

“Highly original”

Rose of Nevada has been billed as a science fiction film by some, but anyone tuning in expecting to see aliens and spaceships is going to be bitterly disappointed. I’d describe it as more of a disturbing supernatural chiller than anything else – it has more in common with, say, The Innocents or The Lighthouse than it does with Doctor Who.

Turner and MacKay deliver excellent performances, particularly the latter, who carries the film’s emotional weight. Francis Magee overdoes the salty old sea dog routine somewhat as Murgey, although it some respects, his overblown characterisation perhaps fits in with the otherworldly nature of the plot.

Whatever the case, this is another highly original masterpiece from Jenkin – I can’t wait to see what he does next.

As for the release, it features several revealing and entertaining interviews with the cast and crew, as well as a number of Jenkins’ short films.

images: Steve Tanner

Sarah Morgan( Writer )

Sarah Morgan studied film journalism at post-graduate level with the BFI and has been writing about TV and film for PA Media’s newspaper, magazine and new media customers since 1996. She’s also written for a wide range of other publications, both online and in print, including the book Offbeat and Intermission magazine, and is a regular contributor to the Talking Pictures TV podcast. When she isn’t watching movies, she’s collecting and reading vintage crime and horror paperback books or, for her sins, watching her beloved Sheffield Wednesday.

You do not have any posts.