Ponderosa

Preceded by “Classic Water”

ERIC SAYS Rob Rice’s Ponderosa has a tone that’s remarkably assured, yet almost impossible to pin down. As it introduces us to its characters and the lay of its land, you may find yourself wondering if you’re watching a character drama, a deadpan comedy, or a psychological horror flick. The answer? Yes. Like the most adventurous works of Chabrol, Ponderosa takes us in many fruitful directions before disarming viewers with its potent crescendo—one that makes us reconsider all that’s come before.

Like Zac Farley and Dennis Cooper’s Room Temperature (of New/Next 2025, on which Rice worked as assistant director), Ponderosa finds unexpected poetry in the cookie-cutter mundanity of contemporary suburban-American sprawl. Produced by longtime Baltimorean Matthew Porterfield (Hamilton, I Used to Be Darker, Sollers Point), Ponderosa travels within the vestiges of Americana still standing in our late-capitalist moment—even as, with aww-shucks approach not unlike that of Blue Velvet-era Lynch, it brings us uncomfortably close to deep wells of fear and fury lurking just underneath the surface.