movie review causeway

With “Causeway,” Jennifer Lawrence returns to the kind of raw, understated performance that put her on the map and earned her the first of her many Academy Award nominations when she was only 20 years old.

All the naturalism and authenticity she exhibited in Debra Granik ’s excellent, 2010 indie drama “Winter’s Bone” are on display again—not that those talents went anywhere when Lawrence was starring in the multibillion-dollar “Hunger Games” franchise or a trio of splashy David O. Russell movies. It’s just that the spectacle surrounding her often overwhelmed what made her such a compelling screen presence in the first place.

Here, in acclaimed theater director Lila Neugebauer ’s feature filmmaking debut, Lawrence gets to operate in a lower, more intimate register. It seems freeing for her somehow—the lack of makeup, the subtle rhythms, the unhurried pace. She’s still the Girl on Fire, but the flame is a bit softer, urging you to lean in and feel its warmth.

Lawrence stars as Lynsey, a young woman who’s just returned to the United States from Afghanistan, where an IED caused her to suffer a severe brain injury while she was working with the Army Corps of Engineers. In a stripped-down opening sequence, Neugebauer efficiently establishes Lynsey’s awkward new routine, as she relearns basic tasks like brushing her teeth and holding a water glass. The always great Jayne Houdyshell leaves a major impact in just a few scenes as Sharon, the even-tempered, kindhearted caretaker who houses her and helps her with her initial stages of recovery. (“Causeway” boasts a murderer’s row of veteran character actors in key supporting roles; besides Houdyshell, there’s Linda Emond as Lynsey’s blowsy mother and Stephen McKinley Henderson as her cautious doctor.)

Lynsey’s body language says what she will not: that she’s frustrated, that she’s impatient, that she hates having to rely on other people to get through the day. Lawrence accomplishes a great deal wordlessly in expressing who her character is and what she values. She’s so intuitive in the smallest ways. And once we meet Lynsey’s mom—or rather, see her stumble buzzed into the family’s shabby New Orleans house, having forgotten to pick Lynsey up from the bus station—we begin to understand the origin of this independent streak.

But Lynsey’s defiant façade begins to crumble when she strikes up an unlikely friendship with Brian Tyree Henry ’s James, the mechanic who’s working on her broken-down pickup truck. The whole movie really changes when Henry arrives, he exudes such a deep humanity. But James also has endured significant physical injury and learned to cope with demons of his own—all of which makes the script from Ottessa Moshfegh & Luke Goebel and Elizabeth Sanders sound like a total downer. It’s not.

Lawrence and Henry enjoy a gentle, easy vibe, and while their characters tentatively feel one another out, in no time they’re affectionately teasing each other with the comfort of childhood pals. Before James becomes a central part of Lynsey’s life, she’s constantly stumbling upon the city’s party atmosphere but remaining just on the periphery of it. He helps her rejoin the real world, and she helps him open up and trust again. They bond by sneaking into the Garden District backyards where she cleans pools by day, and through the extremely Louisiana activity of drinking a six-pack of beer in the park on a sticky summer night. Watching them together is a consistent, simple joy.

But if there’s any tension in Neugebauer’s film, it stems from the growing realization that this reverie can’t last. Lynsey’s increasing restlessness to be redeployed and return to work—whether or not she should, physical or emotionally—is the only potential problem. She mentions that drinking on her meds might not be the best idea, but that doesn’t stop her from doing so night after night without consequences. We know they will push each other to face their deepest sorrows and regrets, but these moments never quite pack the emotional wallop they perhaps intend.

“Causeway” ultimately may be a little too languid, too restrained, but there’s catharsis to be found in its quiet moments and fine-tuned performances.

Now playing in theaters and available on Apple TV+.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Jennifer Lawrence as Lynsey
• Brian Tyree Henry as James
• Linda Emond as Gloria
• Jayne Houdyshell as Sharon
• Stephen McKinley Henderson as Dr. Lucas
• Russell Harvard as Justin
• Alex Somers

Cinematographer

• Diego García
• Elizabeth Sanders
• Luke Goebel
• Ottessa Moshfegh
• Lila Neugebauer
• Lucian Johnston

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‘Causeway’ Review: Companions on a Hard Road to Recovery

Superb acting from Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry brings credibility to an underdeveloped story of trauma and friendship.

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By A.O. Scott

The early scenes in Lila Neugebauer’s “Causeway” find Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence) in the first phase of a long healing process. An Army engineer who suffered a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan, Lynsey — with the help of a patient health aide (Jayne Houdyshell) — must relearn the basic functions of daily life, and teach her body to work again.

Lawrence, somber and subdued, gradually coaxes her character into view. Lynsey emerges from a state of anxious blankness, recovering language, memory, physical coordination and the contours of her personality. Returning home to New Orleans, she moves in with her mother (Linda Emond), who is too preoccupied with other matters to pay much attention to her daughter.

Not that Lynsey needs babysitting. She pressures her doctor (Stephen McKinley Henderson) to clear her for redeployment. Lynsey is tough, solitary and self-sufficient, attributes Lawrence has shown before — notably in the “Hunger Games” movies and in her breakthrough film, “Winter’s Bone” — but rarely in such a low-key, non-heroic mode.

The satisfactions of “Causeway,” Neugebauer’s debut feature (the script is by Elizabeth Sanders, Luke Goebel and Ottessa Moshfegh ), come from watching Lawrence and her co-star, Brian Tyree Henry, trading quiet, insightful bits of acting. Henry plays James, who owns the repair shop where Lynsey brings her balky old pickup truck. Recognizing each other as fellow loners — and also, perhaps unconsciously, as fellow sufferers — James and Lynsey start hanging out together.

Lynsey takes a job cleaning swimming pools, and she and James spend off-hours drinking beer, smoking weed and floating around at the homes of clients who are conveniently out of town. Hanging out this way is a pleasant respite from the stresses and struggles of existence — for James and Lynsey, and for the audience too. But having brought them together, the movie isn’t quite sure what to do with them.

James has lost part of a leg in a car crash that killed someone he loved. Lynsey is also haunted by the loss of a family member. The symmetry of their physical and psychological wounds is perhaps too neatly arranged. The bond that develops between them — and the ways that it is, inevitably, tested — is rooted in shared trauma, which is to say in a screenwriting conceit.

“Causeway” is both thin and heavy-handed, its plot overly diagramed and its characters inadequately fleshed out. The burden of making it credible falls disproportionately on Henry and Lawrence, superb actors who do what they can to bring the script’s static and fuzzy ideas about pain, alienation and the need for connection to something that almost resembles life.

Causeway Rated R. Cursing and cannabis. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and available to watch on Apple TV+ .

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

‘Causeway’ Starts as a Trauma Drama. It Ends as a Testament to Two Actors’ Talents

• By David Fear

Causeway, the new movie starring Jennifer Lawrence , technically falls somewhere in the middle of this category, although it has a tendency to keep drifting towards the “quietly amazing” side of the spectrum. Drift is a key word here, as that’s the pace that the movie operates on; there’s a sort of ambling, buying-time vibe that not only mirrors the main character’s slow, unsteady return to “normal,” but helps distinguish this film from a long line of life-after-wartime stories. (It opens wide and hits Apple+ on Friday, November 4th.)

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Then Lynsey asks when she can “go back to work.” She is a soldier, and the sooner she can be re-deployed, the sooner life goes on. That is her true normal.

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Whenever it’s simply these two opening up to each other, or trying to open up to each other and almost but not quite succeeding, Causeway feels almost voyeuristic — like you’ve stumbled across two people fumbling through small talk until they surprisingly sync up. Or, in a few cases, taking one step forward in connecting before gliding a half-dozen steps backward. When the movie tries to narrow down on the will-she-won’t-she, can-she-should-she notion of returning to the field, or getting away from her toxic home life and looking to a sustainable future, it starts to resemble the ghosts of trauma dramas past. Like Coming Home (1978), a natural point of comparison if somewhat of a dated one, it’s blessed and also a little cursed with having a duo at the center of it all that feel more compelling than the raw narrative material. Unlike that earlier story of return and rebirth, it doesn’t look to romance as salvation. It simply lets these two people try to save each other, one act of kindness at a time.

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Review: The dam never breaks in emotionally dry Jennifer Lawrence drama ‘Causeway’

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From the silent opening moments of “Causeway,”the feature debut of acclaimed theater director Lila Neugebauer , it’s clear that this spare drama is a return to the stripped-down indie roots of Oscar-winning star Jennifer Lawrence , whose breakout performance in Debra Granik’s harsh and scrappy 2010 film “Winter’s Bone ” earned the actor her first Academy Award nomination at age 20.

Barefaced, looking wan and thin, her hair lank, Lawrence seems as young as she did 12 years ago in “Winter’s Bone,” and her performance is a far cry from the steely Katniss Everdeen of “The Hunger Games” trilogy or the operatic goddesses she portrayed in three films directed by David O. Russell (“Silver Linings Playbook,” “American Hustle,” “Joy”). Her profile in an out-of-focus close-up is enough to instantly recognize, but as we meet her character Lynsey, Lawrence is almost unrecognizable.

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Lynsey has just returned from Afghanistan, where she suffered a traumatic brain injury in an IED explosion. On the outside, her body is unmarred, the injury internal, her bleeding brain unseen, and she needs to relearn how to stand, walk, bathe, hold things and remember, which she does under the patient care of her nurse, Sharon (Jayne Houdyshell). Soon, she’s well enough to go home, but Lynsey can only think of going back, of getting to work.

It’s clear Lynsey wants to run away rather than return home, and her arrival at her mother’s home in New Orleans is tentative and anticlimactic. Her face stiff with the effort to appear normal, her limbs loose and untrustworthy, she moves about the world gingerly, hesitantly. Lawrence is often rigid and dead-eyed (unnervingly, she rarely blinks), but there is intention with that choice, playing a person recovering from a brain injury using all of her ability to present as normal. And the actor’s small, detailed physical performance is indeed a wonder to study.

Lynsey goes through the motions, showing up to her pool cleaning job, avoiding her mother (Linda Emond) and badgering her neurologist (Stephen McKinley Henderson) for work clearance. The remote “Causeway” warms up at the entrance of Brian Tyree Henry , playing James, a mechanic with whom Lynsey finds a halting friendship. The two bond over burgers and beer and the commonalities in their traumatic pasts: James lost a leg in a car accident.

Henry is such an earthy, captivating presence that he holds the center of gravity in “Causeway” — when he’s not on screen, the film drifts, rudderless, as Lynsey does. The screenplay, originally written by Elizabeth Sanders, with additional work by Ottessa Moshfegh and Luke Goebel, implicates much, but says very little about Lynsey’s past and the ghosts that haunt her in New Orleans. While her doctor frets about the trauma Lynsey suffered in Afghanistan, she obliquely suggests that the traumatic memories of her hometown are worse.

Neugebauer’s stylistic approach is the gritty, dim, digital look that is de rigueur in independent cinema these days, the camerawork as inert and staid as our protagonist’s face. New Orleans offers a lively backdrop, with peeks into the backyards of the stately mansions where Lynsey cleans iridescent turquoise pools. The sheen of dripping sweat indicates the humid environment; the snatches of patchwork music vibrating with the energy of this place.

Lynsey had been working on a dam in Afghanistan with the Army Corps of Engineers when she was injured, and it’s a fascinating metaphor for this character who keeps everything bottled up. One keeps waiting for “Causeway” to break open, for the tightly held secrets to come flooding out. That the film takes its title from the location of James’ accident, “a raised road or track across low or wet ground,” indicates that the film would rather skim along the surface, never allowing us to get that deep.

'Causeway'

Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes Rated: R, for some language, sexual references and drug use Playing: Starts Oct. 28, Laemmle Monica, Santa Monica; available Nov. 4 on Apple TV+

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‘causeway’ review: jennifer lawrence and brian tyree henry elevate gentle drama about trauma and connection.

The Oscar winner plays a soldier wounded in Afghanistan whose return home to New Orleans stirs up earlier emotional damage in Lila Neugebauer’s first feature, premiering in Toronto.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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The sensitivity, delicate modulation of tone and skilled ensemble work that distinguished those stage productions is evident in A24 ’s Causeway , which marks the first screenplay from noted novelist Ottessa Moshfegh, co-written with newcomers Luke Goebel and Elizabeth Sanders. It’s a small-scale film that many might call unambitious, favoring delicate observation over big emotional payoff. But its humanistic virtues should register with Apple TV+ viewers.

Returning to a messy house with no food, Lindsay discovers that her single mother Gloria ( Linda Emond ) mixed up the day she was due back, an indication of her general unreliability. The pieces gradually come together of an unhappy upbringing, including the distress of watching her brother Justin (Russell Harvard, in a single beautiful scene toward the end) mess up his life with drugs. All that explains why she’s so anxious to return to active service, despite warnings from her neurologist (Stephen McKinley Henderson) that going off her meds will put her at high risk for seizures and chronic depression.

The film’s muted visuals could be more interesting, but it shows a nice feel for the low-income New Orleans neighborhood where Lindsay grew up, in contrast to the wealthier parts of town where she goes to clean pools in a placeholder job.

Unlike Lindsay, who put as much distance between herself and her home and family as possible, the kind auto mechanic, James (Henry), with whom she strikes up a tentative friendship while getting her brother’s beat-up truck fixed, has remained in his family home with uncomfortable associations. The evolution of their relationship is played with pleasing understatement by Lawrence and Henry, as Lindsay slowly opens up about what happened to her in Afghanistan and James reveals the details of an accident in which he lost a leg.

There are no big epiphanies in the script and no moments of major dramatic fireworks. But there’s a warming ebb and flow of trust in Lindsay’s friendship with James as they bond first over a shared love of vintage Ernie K-Doe hits and then respond intuitively to each other’s needs, albeit with some hitches and misunderstandings. The emotional shifts are nicely underscored by tender electronic music from former Sigur Rós collaborator Alex Somers.

Causeway marked Lawrence’s first new project after announcing she was taking a breather for a year, and it’s a pleasure to see her return to her indie roots, especially once Henry’s presence prompts her to up her game. He digs deep in ways we haven’t seen much from him since his indelible single scene in If Beale Street Could Talk . The chemistry between these two excellent actors, each of them quite distinct in style, sneaks up on you and enriches this modest drama about bruised people lowering their guard enough to seek comfort.

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A US soldier suffers a traumatic brain injury while fighting in Afghanistan and struggles to adjust to life back home. A US soldier suffers a traumatic brain injury while fighting in Afghanistan and struggles to adjust to life back home. A US soldier suffers a traumatic brain injury while fighting in Afghanistan and struggles to adjust to life back home.

• Lila Neugebauer
• Ottessa Moshfegh
• Luke Goebel
• Elizabeth Sanders
• Jennifer Lawrence
• Brian Tyree Henry
• Linda Emond
• 121 User reviews
• 120 Critic reviews
• 66 Metascore
• 4 wins & 39 nominations total

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• Trivia Lawrence and Henry continued to workshop the script together during the pandemic as a result of their chemistry and to further enrich it as their scenes were seen as the most compelling of the film.
• Goofs When Lynsey's mother is smoking in the kitchen while taking to Linsey; the orientation of her lighter on the table changes from cut to cut. Additionally the way her mother holds the second cigarette she is about to light up also changes.

Gloria : Aren't your tits sweating? Get your ass in this pool.

• Connections Featured in Amanda the Jedi Show: This Movie was Shockingly Terrible - Best and Worst of TIFF 2022 (2022)
• Soundtracks Come September Performed by Kavika Written by Peter Kamano Courtesy of d2 Music

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• Dec 29, 2022
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Causeway Reviews

Full of compelling moments that enable viewers to get inside the mind of someone suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Causeway is a fantastic representation of empathy and humanity.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 25, 2024

Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry are both excellent in Causeway, Lila Neugebauer’s feature debut about an Army vet and mechanic finding solace in each other.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 25, 2024

This is a story about the multi-dimensional forms trauma can come in, and how such feelings can shape our choices and personalities.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 15, 2024

Causeway is a sensitive character study, giving its actors some of the richest and most complex roles we've seen them play in a while.

Full Review | Jul 12, 2024

Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry are at their restrained best in an emotional drama about a soldier healing from trauma, chasing belongingness and figuring out life in a world lonelier than a battlefield.

Full Review | Nov 16, 2023

My attachment to this film was significant. Being forced to return to your hometown due to an unexpected incident is a difficult pill to take, especially after working so hard to leave in the first place.

Full Review | Sep 23, 2023

Two stellar performances by Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry craft a friendship built around good company and comfort that is a rarely seen dynamic between men and women in film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 19, 2023

Causeway's technical elements combined with stellar performances and Lila Neugebauer’s inspired direction make the film a standout.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 26, 2023

“Causeway” is a hauntingly gentle depiction of life after injury. Some injuries are physical, while others emotional, and Neugebauer does a splendid job of laying all the cards out on the depressing table.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Jennifer Lawrence returns to compelling storytelling with Causeway, allowing quiet beats to propel the narrative forward as she escapes into a role that fits her skills incredibly well.

Full Review | Jul 23, 2023

Lila Neugebauer directs the film as if were written by Kenneth Lonergan, which is to say she does an excellent job keeping everything low-key and natural. Causeway, however, is defeated by a clunky screenplay.

Full Review | Mar 16, 2023

Causeway wastes no time in showing the gritty underbelly of the story. A move that makes the friendship subplot seem almost like a plot twist later in the film.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 14, 2023

Understands trauma and the past's unknown forecast for the future.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Mar 14, 2023

Lila Neugebauer’s slow, patient drama plays like a missive...

Full Review | Mar 13, 2023

Lawrence and Tyree Henry form a connection that’s life-giving...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 25, 2023

Like a therapy session, it strictly follows a “tell not show” mantra, which fares well in Oscar-season but organically has a meagre audience of just a handful.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 16, 2023

The problem with Causeway: it advances casually and lightly for the sake of entertainment, and you kind of know what is coming at every single turn.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 16, 2023

What sounds like a well-intentioned but threadbare dramatic retread ends up being something deeply affecting and powerful, a rare movie that — thanks to the skill of those involved — ends up being much more than the sum of its parts.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 15, 2023

The script is intelligent and realistic, with the right silences that allow us to digest the confessions. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 13, 2023

Lawrence is superb. I couldn’t recall her character’s name when I started writing this review, but that wasn’t a big deal because her performance was all I could think about.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Feb 9, 2023

‘Causeway’ Review: Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry Excel In Story of Escape and Recovery | TIFF 2022

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'Rebel Moon' Director’s Cut Review: Somehow, Zack Snyder’s Netflix Movies Got Worse

10 great movies recommended by jackie chan, 10 movies to watch if you love 'jack ryan'.

This review was originally part of our 2022 Toronto International Film Festival coverage .

When we first meet Lynsey ( Jennifer Lawrence ), she can barely take care of herself. She struggles to get a toothbrush in her mouth, spouts at things that she doesn’t mean to say, and needs help learning how to do the everyday things she used to take for granted—all thanks to a brain injury she suffered while serving in Afghanistan. As soon as she starts to feel some semblance of normalcy, Lynsey starts trying to figure out how to reenlist, an idea that everyone but herself believes to be a terrible idea. Ever since she has returned home in New Orleans, Lynsey feels the need to escape this place she already made it out of once before.

Causeway , from Maid director Lila Neugebauer , has its moments where it seems like a story we’ve seen all too often before, as a person who has left the service attempts to return to this dangerous line of work. Causeway shows the nightmares that come out of nowhere, the moments where the past hits the lead character, and just looking at Lawrence as she rides the bus into New Orleans, you can see the vulnerability and fear of returning home. To Lynsey, it seems as though the risk of getting blown up by an IED is safer than coming back home.

But as Causeway unravels and gets further away from this dedication to returning to war, the better this story becomes. This is largely thanks to a relationship that springs up between Lynsey and James ( Brian Tyree Henry ), a mechanic who starts hanging out and helping Lynsey in her day-to-day. The screenplay by Elizabeth Sanders , Luke Goebel and Ottessa Moshfegh starts to shift away from a coming home story, and more towards the shared trauma that a place can impose on someone, and the friendships that make these experiences slightly better.

It’s great to see Lawrence back in a role where she can really show off her acting talents, especially in the quieter moments. Again, it’s in Lynsey’s eyes where we can see the weight of everything she’s considering. Lynsey clearly thought she was out of New Orleans for good, but now, she’s back living with her mother ( Linda Emond ), who does nothing but disappoint, and remembering her junkie brother who also found his own way to escape this home.

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The same is true of Henry’s James, who is also shaken by trauma, after a car accident caused him to lose his leg. James is certainly more open than Lynsey, but there’s still a part of himself that is guarded. He’s known loss and pain in his life, yet he hasn’t closed that part of his heart off entirely. James plays this role with such compassion and heart, even when he’s simply assisting Lynsey in her day-to-day tasks, sharing a snow cone with her, or defending her at a bar. Lawrence is great—but we already know that. Here, Henry gets a great opportunity to show he’s an excellent lead, and absolutely nails it, stealing Causeway in every scene he’s in.

But it’s when Lynsey and James get together that Causeway truly shines. Their bond is clearly important to both of them at this time in their lives, and the care they immediately have for each other is palpable. Causeway is at its best when it's just Lawrence and Henry playing off each other, simply sitting on a park bench, drinking a few beers, and opening up to each other. While these both will discuss their traumas with each other, there’s a lightness to these discussions, one that makes these memories decidedly part of their past, instead of always in the forefront of their minds.

Causeway ’s screenplay frequently misdirects the audience, making them think they’re watching one type of film when they’re really watching another. In the very beginning, Causeway seems to be about a woman returning from war and the difficulties in readjusting to everyday life. Then, Causeway puts it in the audience’s mind that this might be a will-they-won’t-they story for the Lynsey and James characters. But instead, Causeway attempts to tell a larger story about the things we do to escape, whether it’s through quite literally leaving the country to go fight a war that would be better than staying at home, to finding someone else in your life who can help make the weight of life a little more bearable. Causeway presents the idea that home—however you define it—can be a prison of our own making, and yet, sometimes, that might not be such a bad thing.

Neugebauer, directing her first film, and cinematographer Diego García excel at making the world around Lynsey just somber enough for us to understand her desire to escape. Especially through the eyes of James, we can see the simple beauty of New Orleans and a city that he has lived in his entire life and has so designs to leave. Whereas when we see Causeway through Lynsey’s viewpoint, it’s dreary homes, dirty pools in forgotten backyards, and hot, humid streets. But when these two are together, again, the warmth of the city permeates their pain. In one scene where James takes Lynsey to his home, for the first time, we feel the comforts of home, the beauty of making a home that one appreciates and loves—a feeling that Lynsey hasn’t known when living with her mother.

Neugebauer’s debut film shows great promise, Lawrence hasn’t had a role this great in years, and Henry once again proves that he’s one of the most exciting actors on the rise right now. Like the relationship between Lynsey and James, Causeway is a film that slowly grows on you, a film that puts on a tough front—with its devastated characters and desire for escape—yet at its center is a tremendous about of heart, love, with its found families and shared pain.

Causeway is now playing in select theaters and streaming on Apple TV+

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Causeway review: Jennifer Lawrence reminds us all how good she is

Co-starring a similarly brilliant brian tyree henry, lila neugebauer’s directorial debut finds a gentle, understated rhythm, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Lila Neugebauer. Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Brian Tyree Henry, Linda Emond, Jayne Houdyshell, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Russell Harvard. 15, 94 minutes.

Causeway isn’t about the actor Jennifer Lawrence . But in its own strange way it serves as a metaphor for Lawrence herself. It’s about a young woman who blows up – albeit in a war rather than Hollywood – and then has to pick up the pieces. It’s Lawrence’s first proper starring role since 2018, when a run of largely disliked projects (the Chris Pratt space romance Passengers ; the masterful-slash-loathed biblical allegory Mother! ) collided with her enormous fame and sent her on a self-imposed career break. All that noise made it easy to forget how good she is at being quiet. In Causeway , director Lila Neugebauer lingers on her star’s tiny shifts in expression, her shrinking melancholy. We haven’t seen this side of Lawrence since her star-making role in the 2010 neo-western Winter’s Bone . It feels like a homecoming.

Lawrence is Lynsey, an engineer for the US military who is returned to her native New Orleans after barely surviving an explosion in Afghanistan. In between cleaning pools and playing a memory game to soothe the effects of a brain injury, she meets James ( Atlanta’s Brian Tyree Henry ), an equally haunted mechanic who fixes her mother’s car when it breaks down. They hang out. They smoke. They slowly disclose their respective traumas. Lynsey doesn’t quite know what to do with herself, but assumes she’ll need to return to her military job – whether it kills her or not.

That’s... about it. Causeway isn’t necessarily anti-plot. The script – co-credited to novelist Ottessa Moshfegh at her most uncharacteristically downbeat – cycles through a traditional three-act structure, complete with an inciting incident that triggers a last-minute threat to Lynsey and James’s blossoming friendship. But it’s otherwise devoid of frills, finding instead a gentle, understated rhythm where long-held conflicts simmer ambiguously rather than explode.

Neugebauer, a first-time feature director with a background in theatre, could have made her debut a lot more showy than it is (scenes set in Afghanistan were reportedly left on the cutting room floor), but smartly she cuts to the chase a lot of the time: Causeway has two incredibly gifted performers at its centre, and knows they’re who you want to see.

Lawrence is brilliant here – fatigued, anxious, wonderfully unaffected. Henry, meanwhile, is an ocean of bottled-up sadness. There is a scene about halfway through Causeway in which James talks about the accident that left him without a leg, but few specifics – or the horrid tangents it sprouted in its aftermath – are actually verbalised. Rather, Henry lends each hushed gap in James’s tale the feel of a sledgehammer.

More than anything, though, Causeway feels in conversation with its leading lady. Lawrence was so close to becoming the kind of famous that torches any pretence of transformation in an actor’s work; where you’re just watching a celebrity in a wig, or putting on an accent for effect. In that self-imposed hiatus since 2018’s pulpy spy thriller Red Sparrow – a role in last year’s divisive asteroid comedy Don’t Look Up notwithstanding – Lawrence seems to have found her footing again. Her performance marks a return to the kind of textured naturalism that won her so much acclaim in the first place; it gestures not only to her past but where she is likely headed next. As a movie, Causeway feels a little too slight to win awards kudos, and will likely end up a footnote in Lawrence’s career overall. But it might just be the most important movie she’ll ever make.

‘Causeway’ is in selected cinemas and can be streamed via Apple TV Plus from 4 September

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‘Causeway’ Review: Jennifer Lawrence Reminds Us Just How Good She Is

David ehrlich.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. AppleTV+ releases the film in select theaters and on its streaming platform on Friday, November 4.

It’s so good to see Jennifer Lawrence play a real person again. Despite the quiet strength she brought to the “Hunger Games” franchise, and the outlandish joy she mined from the likes of “mother!” and “Red Sparrow,” a long run of dreadful “X-Men” sequels and over-cranked David O. Russell fiascos have dulled one of America’s brightest young movie stars to the point where it’s become easy to forget how good she can be.

If nothing else, the microscopically small but sincerely moving “ Causeway ” — which the actress also produced under her Excellent Cadaver banner — offers a strong reminder of what Lawrence can bring to the screen when she’s cast as a recognizable human being as opposed to a mutant shapeshifter or a David O. Russell character (sorry, but “American Hustle” deserves its own separate ding).

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Army Corps engineer Lynsey wanted to leave her hometown so badly she went to Afghanistan; there, she suffered a brain injury that has forced her return. Lawrence’s raw but restrained performance in “Causeway” also marks a return to the sort of hardscrabble indie drama that launched her career, and a return to the kind of unflinching, open-faced, recklessly stoic survivors whom she portrays with the natural presence of someone whose own life is on the line. Her turn as Lynsey shows that Lawrence knows her own strengths and isn’t afraid to make herself vulnerable to show it.

That’s not the reason why this ultra-modest character study — sheared down to the point that you can almost see it shivering — works in spite of its small ambitions. “Causeway” holds together because Lawrence may not even be the movie’s best performance.

Shot in 2019 and snipped into shape during the pandemic, “Causeway” begins with Lynsey returning home from war and receiving what any fan of American theater would consider a hero’s welcome: Several weeks of rehab with Jayne Houdyshell. When Sharon first takes Lynsey into her care, the young engineer is just starting to recover from an IED blast. She can’t walk on her own strength or even find her mouth with her toothbrush, but progress comes quickly to someone who’s itching to re-enlist. First-time film director Lila Neugebauer ’s camera begins to move when Lynsey does, and it isn’t long before the stiff wide shots of the movie’s opening scenes give way to a more relaxed flow as Lynsey arrives back home New Orleans and begins cleaning pools as she waits to be declared fit for redeployment.

Home is not a place that Lynsey finds particularly relaxing. She tells Sharon that someone will pick her up from the bus station, but no one does. Her father is out of the picture, she only speaks of her brother in the past tense, and her mom (Linda Emond, nuanced in a role that feels like it lost a few layers in the edit) seems hopelessly distracted and self-involved; maybe that’s a defense mechanism she developed in response to an implosive family dynamic. Or maybe it’s Lynsey who retreated into herself when things got bad, cloaking herself in some camouflage and running off to fix broken things on the other side of the world.

Fixing herself will prove more difficult. Her eagerness finds her behind the wheel of a car sooner than she’s ready, which in turn steers her towards the auto body shop where she meets a man with some internal (and external) damage of his own. James Aucoin is played by the great Brian Tyree Henry , and it sure is a thing of beauty to see him play a real person again, too (while “Atlanta” continues to be a televised showcase for Henry’s generational talent, the “Widows” actor has spent the last four years grinding it out studio fare like “Eternals” and “Bullet Train,” even though he was naturally the best part of both).

The complexion of this movie is changed entirely by James’ arrival on the scene, as he and Lynsey immediately gravitate toward each other through the magnetic force of mutual understanding. Neither character would be able to explain whatever forces of the universe might be galvanizing their unexpected bond — whatever physical attraction James might have to Lynsey is tempered by his self-disgust — and so the moment they meet is also the moment when “Causeway” comes alive with dramatic possibility. Alex Somers’ glassy ambient score has already told us what kind of movie this is going to be (a delicate, understated indie drama that’s deep with pain but always leaves room for hope), and yet James and Lynsey come together in a way that allows for a rare life force to percolate inside the story’s ultra-predictable trajectory.

Credited to Luke Goebel, Elizabeth Sanders, and “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” author Ottessa Moshfegh, the film’s patchy but perceptive script essentially follows its two lead characters as they have a series of hushed and probing — but not too probing — conversations in different hangout spots across residential NOLA. Certain shots from Lawrence and Henry’s recent films might cost more than this entire movie, but the city of New Orleans adds value where it can, with assists from legendary production designer Jack Fisk and “Wildlife” cinematographer Diego García, who tease a emotional texture from even the most banal locations. The changes of scenery gradually map the tectonic formation of a new friendship. She’s itching to run away from her pain, while he can barely walk without betraying his own (the details of which are best left for Henry to share himself); over time, they nudge one another in opposite directions, all the while moving closer towards a shared sense of home.

No one is reinventing the wheel here, but Lawrence and Henry are such a prickly and believable pair of broken people that even the scenes where nothing much happens seem charged with a healing electricity. These are characters who have held their breaths for most of their lives, and there’s a powerful humanity in how they finally give each other permission to exhale (even if the one scene where they fight is so fantastic that it left me wishing the rest of the film hadn’t been quite so tranquil).

Lawrence knows just where to crack Lynsey open, and Henry is spine-tinglingly great as he wrestles with the wants and needs of a man who doesn’t always believe he deserves to be alive; the scenes in which James opens up about his pain are so powerfully affecting because Henry’s downcast gaze and half-swallowed voice allow you to feel his character risking more of the same abandonment that’s followed him for so long. His tragedy happened on the causeway, and yet — to put a finer point on this than Neugebauer’s gentle film ever does — it’s the roads that Lynsey and James pave for each other that lead them over their lowest points.

This could all feel schematic in lesser hands, but Neugebauer gives Lawrence and Henry the space they need to make the film’s characters feel like real people. As a result, the inevitable glimmer of hope they share at the end is as honest as the hurt that guided them to it.

“Causeway” premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. A24 and Apple will release it in theaters and on Apple TV+ on Friday, November 4.

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‘Causeway’ Review: A Subdued Jennifer Lawrence Shines in Intimate Drama

The actress joins Brian Tyree Henry for a gentle Lila Neugebauer film that moves with the languid rhythms of New Orleans

This review originally ran on September 10, 2022, in conjunction with the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Jennifer Lawrence’s movie stardom sometimes makes it hard to remember just how down-to-earth and gritty an actress she seemed to be when audiences first became aware of her in 2010’s “Winter’s Bone” — or even, before that, in 2008’s “The Burning Plain.” Those films were raw, artful indies and Lawrence’s charisma didn’t obscure the fact that even as a teenager, she was a tough, resourceful actress whose performances were grounded, not glamorous.

A decade and a lot of awards later, Lawrence comes as something of a shock when she appears onscreen, morose and barely verbal, in first-time feature director Lila Neugebauer’s “Causeway.” The drama, which premiered on Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival, doesn’t provide an “oh yeah, she’s a really good actress” moment, because she’s been doing fine work all along – but it is a reminder that a subdued, understated Lawrence can be a truly compelling Lawrence. (Maybe even the most compelling Lawrence since “Silver Linings Playbook” a decade ago.)

But “Causeway” isn’t a one-woman show. Lawrence’s co-star, Brian Tyree Henry (best known for his roles on the TV shows “Atlanta,” “Boardwalk Empire” and “This Is Us”) is as subtle and grounded as she is, with the two of them crafting quietly memorable chemistry as battered souls taking different roads to some kind of redemption. This is not any kind of standard love story, but a portrait of an unlikely friendship that feels achingly real.

Neugebauer is best known as a theater director, though she has directed episodes of “Maid” and “The Sex Lives of College Girls.” But here, working from a script by Luke Goebel, Ottessa Moshfegh and Elizabeth Sanders, she displays no sign of a neophyte’s nerves, sliding into feature films with a calm assurance.   

Lawrence plays Lynsey, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who is emerging from extensive physical and mental therapy. She has panic attacks at night and has trouble filtering her thoughts when she does decide to speak: “What a miserable life,” she blurts out when her caretaker talks about her daily routine. But rather than doing much in the way of introspection, she’d rather gobble what she calls her “don’t shoot yourself in the head” pills as she begs her doctor (Stephen McKinley Henderson, flawlessly underplaying once again) to let her re-deploy.

Because she needs to go somewhere to recuperate, Lynsey heads to her mother’s house in New Orleans, where mom has a boyfriend, uncertain hours and a taste for booze that her daughter doesn’t share. Not suited to sitting at home, Lindsay gets a job cleaning pools, then befriends James (Henry), the owner of a car repair joint and a man whose marriage ended badly some years earlier.

Their friendship grows slowly and moves with easy Crescent City rhythms. Cinematographer Diego Garcia, whose resume ranges from Paul Dano’s exquisite “Wildlife” to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s wildly different (and equally exquisite) “Cemetery of Splendour,” helps illuminate the places that make that town so special, from corner joints to mansions whose pools are often as not grand monuments to an elegance and affluence that has faded. “Causeway” feels like New Orleans, adopting the pace and energy of a deeply funky town that has almost (but not quite, dammit!) been battered into submission.

Lynsey is drained, and the film takes on her energy, too; nothing is rushed, nothing is overstated, and the presence of a big star in a movie that refuses to be big isn’t an oddity but a real pleasure.

Both of the main characters get lengthy, quietly riveting monologues: Lynsey when she describes the attack that left her injured to her neurologist, James when he tells Lynsey of the auto accident that killed his young nephew.

But for the most part, the conversations play out casually, with Lawrence and Henry never breaking a sweat (except the kind that everybody in New Orleans has) but never being less than wholly convincing. Key moments are tossed off: Hanging out in a swimming pool whose owners are out of town, Lynsey tells James that she used to see how long she could hold her breath. “What’s the longest you ever went?” he asks.

“Twenty-six years,” she answers with a shrug.

Long stretches go by in silence; a few New Orleans classics (mostly obscure classics) come on the radio, but when composer Alex Somers’ music arrives it’s often as not slow washes of sound, echoey and evocative chords that hang in the air.

For a little more than 90 minutes, stuff happens, mistakes are made, life goes on. And with a lovely intimacy and just enough rueful humor, Neugebauer, Lawrence and Henry deliver an unhurried gem that might feel slight but always feels right.

“Causeway” opens in select US theaters Oct. 28 and on Apple TV+ Nov. 4.

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Causeway review: Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry find loneliness together in a modest, moving indie

The actress plays a damaged soldier returning home to New Orleans in a quiet but affecting drama.

It's easy to forget sometimes that Jennifer Lawrence , an Oscar-winning movie star with two major franchises to her name in the last decade, started her career in indie film. But the spare, contemplative drama Causeway , which bowed this weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival , feels in some ways like a return to her breakout role in the 2010 Sundance Grand Jury prize winner Winter's Bone : a movie largely stripped down to the unadorned essence of its material and the internalized pain of its characters.

Lawrence is Lynsey, a soldier sent back to the U.S. from Afghanistan after suffering a traumatic brain injury. She looks intact, but she needs intensive rehab before she can even begin to use the bathroom or drive a car on her own again; by the time she's recovered enough to leave her temporary caregiver (a congenial Jayne Houdyshell) and go back home to New Orleans, it's clear that whatever trauma she's holding onto didn't all come from overseas. Her mom (Linda Emond) is happy enough but vaguely nonplussed to see her; her brother, an addict who seems either far away or long gone, is barely spoken of. But a chance encounter at an auto-body shop with James ( Brian Tyree Henry ) puts the first small crack in her closed-off exterior. Lynsey remembers playing basketball in high school with his sister, and getting a beer or a Snow-Cone with him feels better than being anywhere else.

She also gets a job cleaning pools, which deposits her in zip codes far from the scruff and privation of her own neighborhood. But what Lynsey most wants, desperately, is to get her neurologist (Stephen McKinley Henderson) to sign off on the papers that will let her redeploy; unsurprisingly, he's less than eager to say yes. So James and Lynsey continue to circle one another, two damaged people offering up small, reluctant morsels of their backstory like bargaining chips (there's a reason why he limps, and no longer speaks to his sister).

Broadway director Lila Neugebauer, making her film debut with a lean script by novelist Ottessa Moshfegh ( My Year of Rest and Relaxation , Eileen ), Luke Goebel, and Elizabeth Sanders, saturates the movie in measured silences and humid, lived-in atmosphere, letting Lawrence and Henry's low-key performances contract and expand. When things might turn conveniently cinematic, they don't: A drunken night at a wealthy client's "borrowed" pool doesn't end with the manufactured drama of the owners suddenly coming home, for example, but with a foolish, aggrieved argument. This pair doesn't need any help hurting themselves.

That lack of outright incident, the willingness to just sit in itself quietly and observe, is one of Causeway 's most admirable qualities, though it can also make the film (already slated by AppleTV+ for a Nov. 4 release) feel too minor-key; there's a fine line between subtlety and impassivity. And certain details (of Lynsey's diagnosis, or James' personal history) seem glossed over, either for convenience or simply because they haven't been fully considered. Still, it's nice to see actors like these do such subtle, sympathetic work for a gifted young director — and to find an outlet for storytelling that doesn't demand neat redemption, but still allows for grace. Grade: B

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Causeway Review

Jennifer lawrence makes a dull movie shine..

Causeway streams on Apple TV+ on Nov. 4.

A film that works despite its aggressive plainness, Lila Neugebauer’s Causeway follows U.S. military technician Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence), who returns to New Orleans from her Afghanistan deployment with a severe brain injury. While on the road to recovery (and seeking desperately to re-enlist), she crosses paths with a local mechanic, James (Brian Tyree Henry), with whom she forms an unlikely and uneasy friendship based on their mutually traumatic pasts.

Aesthetically, Causeway is simple — too simple at times — but its restrained approach yields clarity of performance, even if it lacks clarity of information. Its puzzle pieces take far too long to snap into place for something so straightforward: a character piece about reckoning with the past, and one that runs a mere 92 minutes at that. However, the result is Lawrence’s finest on-screen work in at least a decade. She bucks the overwrought and boisterous habits she formed with directors like David O. Russell ( Joy , Silver Linings Playbook , American Hustle ) and recalls her more subdued, nuanced roles from years past, like in Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone — fittingly, her big awards-season breakout in 2010.

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Written by Elizabeth Sanders, Luke Goebel, and Ottessa Moshfegh, the movie opens in the immediate aftermath of Lynsey’s return. She’s barely able to move, and requires the help of a professional caretaker, Sharon (Jayne Houdyshell), an elderly woman who’s seen people in Lynsey’s condition before. However, their sweet dynamic as Lynsey re-learns to walk, speak, and brush her teeth ends up strangely perfunctory, since the timeline jumps ahead numerous times in quick succession, collapsing her recovery, though not enough that it feels like a prologue (let alone a montage). The film would be better served without this non-committal 20-minute section, or perhaps with a shorter version of it, since little of Lynsey’s arduous physical therapy ends up informing her eventual narrative, which doesn’t truly begin until she returns to her childhood home. However, these initial scenes afford Lawrence the chance to fully live in Lynsey’s skin. It’s like witnessing an actor’s process rather than a character’s journey, but what a process it is, as Lynsey’s stillness, silences, and indignities force Lawrence to look inward as she contemplates a future in which she may never feel complete.

Causeway is Neugebauer’s feature debut. She hails from the world of theater, and her camerawork has a sense of stillness reminiscent of the stage, but at first, this observational quality ends up more distancing than revealing. The onus falls on Lawrence’s physicality, to tell the story of how Lynsey feels as she re-enters the spaces in which she came of age. She erects conversational barriers between herself and her mother (Linda Emond) — a dynamic whose past complications are more teased and referenced than they are meaningfully explored — and she takes up a job as a pool cleaner, which she views as a temporary measure before returning to the Middle East. However, her path to doing so is largely backgrounded; it depends on the approval of her physician (Stephen McKinley Henderson), but her appointments are divided by lengthy stretches, during which there’s little sense of her working towards any physical or emotional objective in particular. Coupled with the lack of discernible storytelling stylizations — i.e. something to visually or aurally tether us to Lynsey’s perspective — the result is passivity, apart from the few moments Lawrence creates intrigue with her listless posture or expression, or even her mildly unsteady walk. The ground beneath her always feels uncertain, but it’s the film’s only real uncertainty when Lynsey moves back home.

Which movie has Jennifer Lawrence's best performance?

However, this slowly begins to change once her truck breaks down and she crosses paths with James. Small favors soon become hangouts, which briefly becomes a will-they-won’t-they to which Lynsey quickly puts a stop, creating room for a blossoming friendship where these two guarded people slowly begin to reveal vulnerable parts of themselves. It’s here that Neugebauer’s restraint comes in handy. Henry’s performance is equally restrained, since James has long since buried his secrets and regrets beneath beer and a personable front (gosh, his laughter is infectious), but when it comes time to explore his home — and thus, his broken past — Neugebauer lets the walls and the little details speak for themselves, as both Lynsey and the camera absorb the carefully crafted environment and all its dramatic implications.

Their dynamic is by no means bubbly or effervescent, but they each come alive in their own way when they’re around one another, even if it’s for reasons as morbid as connectives with each other’s most traumatic moments, and the burdens they each carry. There is also, unfortunately, a scattered-ness to how this mutual understanding manifests — Lynsey gains a new perspective on her past and on her mother, but little of it is rooted in her time spent with James — and the more they reveal about themselves, the more the movie’s missed opportunities come to light.

There are only a handful of times when Causeway aesthetically embodies Lynsey’s point of view. One is specifically a moment of sudden distress, enhanced by jagged sounds, when she’s behind the wheel of her truck. Another introduces the possibility of her PTSD rearing its head by filming a simple joyride with a reduced shutter angle (resulting in a strobing effect, like the opening action scene of Saving Private Ryan ). However, these flourishes are quickly forgotten despite the fact that both Lynsey and James’ respective traumas occurred inside road vehicles, a commonality that Causeway fails to consider even though they spend most of the movie driving around.

It's one of several threads left dangling in mid-air as Causeway lurches towards its hesitant conclusion, in which the outcome doesn’t really matter, since only hints of a story have unfolded. Lynsey’s confrontation of her past has the finesse of a superhero TV show — which is to say, it contains plainly spoken dialogue about trauma, and little else — but even its most abstract and representational elements are made tangible by Lawrence. Her performance isn’t just magnetic, but alchemic, creating textual gold from scenes that would otherwise be dull as lead, thanks to some of the most measured and alluring work of any actress this year. With every strained movement, and every hesitant interaction, Lynsey comes fully formed, even if the film around her rarely feels more than half-baked.

A plain film that inadvertently turns its leading performance into its main attraction, Causeway’s straightforward tale of a returned soldier in search of belonging is elevated tenfold by Jennifer Lawrence’s most powerful, nuanced, and physically committed work in years.

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After starring in a number of mainstream and big studio films, including last year’s Don’t Look Up opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence returns to her early career roots to star in an indie film that is thoughtful and moving. Written by Elizabeth Sanders, Luke Goebel, Ottessa Moshfegh, Causeway is a quiet, contemplative, and understated directorial feature debut for Lila Neugebauer.

Causeway follows Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence), an engineer with the U.S. military who suffers a brain injury while in service and must return home to recuperate. Lynsey’s return to civilian life is difficult, and she’s hesitant to remain with her mother (Linda Emond) for long, itching to be redeployed. While waiting for her doctor (Stephen McKinley Henderson) to clear her, Lynsey gets a job cleaning pools. It isn’t long before she meets and befriends James (Brian Tyree Henry), a mechanic who’s got trauma of his own. The more they hang out, the more they both realize there are things from the past they must — and often struggle to — overcome if they are to move forward.

Related: New Jennifer Lawrence Movie Causeway Gets AppleTV+ Release Date

Causeway doesn’t pass judgment on its characters. Rather, the film tells the audience exactly who they are while leaving plenty of room for empathy. The story has its fair share of character drama, but there are no easy answers here, nor is the film ready to tie up each conflict with a neat bow. It settles into the discomfort for a while, building towards some sort of change and growth for its characters. The ending is satisfying because of the bumpy journey, Lynsey and James’ friendship an anchor amidst the crushing waves that threaten to overwhelm them both. The film is all about the trauma that the characters carry with them from their past. They don’t really know how to handle it, so they run away instead of facing it.

Causeway is profound and gentle in the way it lets Lynsey and James anchor each other; they’re the only ones who can reveal the hard truths that are sitting just beneath the surface, issues that are too scary to deal with because they bring up questions about what’s next. What might happen if they embrace certain truths and let go of things that continue to haunt them? How might they move forward? It’s a grounded narrative that offers viewers an intimate exploration of two people who are struggling to cope, but who need each other in their loneliness and understanding. Neugebauer is content to follow Lynsey as she lives her life after suffering a brain trauma.

What makes the film different from others that explore a post-military life is that most of the traumas Lynsey must deal with aren’t the ones she suffered during her service — they are the ones from her family life. The film explores these difficult-to-overcome scars, but doesn’t push either of the characters towards any kind of redemption. It’s refreshing. The script is a bit timid, as though it’s unsure how far it should take these characters’ stories. That leads to some slow pacing, but Causeway is ultimately intriguing and character-driven enough that it doesn’t detract from the overall narrative.

Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry are excellent together. They have great chemistry and their conversations and jabs at each other feel natural. Lawrence’s performance is restrained, but not hollow. Her portrayal makes it easy to empathize with Lynsey and her attempts at healing. It’s the kind of captivating performance that reminds audiences why she is a powerhouse actress. Meanwhile, Henry continues to show his range, giving an impressive performance as James. Henry depicts James as someone with charisma, but his portrayal is far more layered than that. In most scenes, Henry’s eyes speak for him, showcasing the depth of pain that James feels, as well as his need for connection. Together, the actors are incredible, delving deeper into their characters’ psyche than even the script makes room for.

Causeway had its premiere at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival on September 10. The film releases in theaters and will be available to stream on Apple TV+ November 4. It is 92 minutes long and is rated R for some language, sexual references and drug use.

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‘Causeway’ Review: Jennifer Lawrence, as a U.S. Army Soldier, Goes Back to Her Indie Roots in a Downbeat Tale of Trauma and Recovery

She plays a bomb victim out to heal herself in a drama that revels in its slow-burn gloom.

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Lawrence, returning to her indie roots, starring in a film that will likely make people think of “Winter’s Bone” (the 2010 drama that put her on the map), gives a solid performance that’s raw, plain, stripped of pretense. She makes Lynsey vulnerable and rather impassive; we keep studying her unmade-up face for clues to what’s happening inside. Lynsey gets a job cleaning swimming pools, yet she yearns to go back to the theater of war. From the moment she visits her neurologist, played by the always excellent Stephen McKinley Henderson, she talks about wanting to be redeployed. She was not in combat (she was a water engineer), but this strikes everyone she knows, and also the audience, as a terrible idea, given all she’s been though. Is it toughness, stubbornness, or is she trying to escape something?

Stopping at a garage after her family’s truck breaks down, Lynsey meets James, a laid-back mechanic, who chats with her a bit and then offers to give her a ride. They chat some more, which is encouraging in a movie that doesn’t prize conversation. James, played with a poky spontaneity by Brian Tyree Henry , is a comforting bear of a man who has issues of his own (he was in a serious car accident), and these two like hanging out. It seems like it could be a romance, until she squashes any thoughts in that direction — for James and for the audience — by revealing that she’s gay. They become friends, but the dialogue, by co-screenwriters Luke Goebel, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Elizabeth Sanders, remains on the minimalist side. The two share some rather important confessions but never just sit around and talk about…stuff. Any levity would dilute the despondency.  

It will sound, to some, like I’m carping. “Causeway” traces the healing of a soul, takes its time doing so, and allows actors as good as Lawrence and Henry to vibe together, so what’s the problem? By the end, the film delivers you to a place that feels real. But we have to travel through a zone of fairly arid desolation to get there. That’s been a hallmark of some indie cinema, but it’s one that fewer and fewer moviegoers may now want to walk through.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival, Sept. 11, 2022. MPA rating: R. Running time: 92 MIN.

• Production: An Apple Original Films, A24 release of an A24, Excellent Cadaver production. Producers: Jennifer Lawrence, Justine Ciarrocchi. Executive producers: Lila Neugebauer, Jacob Jaffke, Sophia Lin Patricia Clarkson, Kirk Michael Fellows, Christopher J. Surgent.
• Crew: Director: Lila Neugebauer. Screenplay: Otessa Moshfegh, Luke Goebel, Elizabeth Sanders. Camera: Diego Garcia. Editors: Robert Frazen, Lucian Johnston. Music: Alex Somers.
• With: Jennifer Lawrence, Brian Tyree Henry, Linda Emond, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jayne Houdyshell.

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Common Sense Media Review

Language, drinking, drugs, trauma in war veteran drama.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Causeway is a mature, talky drama starring Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry as new friends grappling with physical and emotional scars. She's an injured U.S Army veteran who's been sent home to recover, and he's a local mechanic who survived a serious car crash. Their accidents…

Why Age 15+?

Regular but not constant use of words including "f--k," "s--t," "damn," "idiot,"

Adults drink alcohol, sometimes getting drunk, and smoke cigarettes and weed. Th

Discussion and recollection of violence, including the horrific scenes and casua

Mercedes Benz, Greyhound, Coca-Cola, eBay, medication brands.

Lynsey talks about her dating preferences. Two characters kiss. There's discussi

Any Positive Content?

This woman-directed/written movie's two main characters are a queer White woman

Friendship can come from unexpected places; good friends are able to overcome co

Lynsey has served in the U.S. Army and is persevering and working hard to overco

Regular but not constant use of words including "f--k," "s--t," "damn," "idiot," "stupid."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults drink alcohol, sometimes getting drunk, and smoke cigarettes and weed. They show a relaxed attitude toward drinking and smoking, and one does this despite possible interactions with serious medications. A person is said to have had a drug issue; he took "crack, meth, and household detergent," someone recalls.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Discussion and recollection of violence, including the horrific scenes and casualties of both a deadly explosion in Afghanistan and a fatal car accident in New Orleans (nothing shown on screen). Lynsey nearly gets into a car crash.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Sex, romance & nudity.

Lynsey talks about her dating preferences. Two characters kiss. There's discussion of one wanting to "f--k" the other.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Diverse Representations

This woman-directed/written movie's two main characters are a queer White woman who's a U.S. Army veteran (Jennifer Lawrence) and a Black man (Brian Tyree Henry). A supporting character is deaf (played authentically by deaf actor Russell Harvard), and one scene is done entirely in sign language. New Orleans is portrayed as a racially and economically diverse city.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Messages

Friendship can come from unexpected places; good friends are able to overcome conflict. It's important to face life's problems rather than try to run from them.

Positive Role Models

Lynsey has served in the U.S. Army and is persevering and working hard to overcome a severe injury she sustained in the line of duty. She wants to redeploy but realizes that may be for the wrong reasons; she learns to adjust her expectations for herself and others. James is also overcoming injury and trauma. He's a kind and generous friend to Lynsey. Lynsey's family has let her down in the past but still cares for her.

Parents need to know that Causeway is a mature, talky drama starring Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry as new friends grappling with physical and emotional scars. She's an injured U.S Army veteran who's been sent home to recover, and he's a local mechanic who survived a serious car crash. Their accidents are described in detail but not shown. Both of them drink beer and smoke pot; cigarettes are also smoked, and a supporting character was said to have a drug dependency and to have sold drugs. The film has positive messages about persevering to solve a problem, friendship sprouting in unexpected places, and the importance of facing life's problems rather than running from them. Language includes "f--k," "s--t," and "damn." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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There aren't any parent reviews yet. Be the first to review this title.

What's the Story?

When CAUSEWAY begins, U.S. Army soldier Lynsey ( Jennifer Lawrence ) has been sent home from Afghanistan due to a brain injury caused by an IED explosion. She has to take a slew of medications and do a lot of rehab, relearning the most basic functions. Eventually she's sent home to her mother's ( Linda Emond ) house in New Orleans, but it's clear their relationship is strained, and Lynsey is eager to redeploy. One day she meets James ( Brian Tyree Henry ), a local mechanic, and the two strike up a friendship. James is dealing with his own injury and emotional baggage, but the two find companionship in each other.

Is It Any Good?

This deliberately slow, talky film about two broken people trying to put their lives back together features great performances from Lawrence and Henry. Causeway director Lila Neugebauer smartly lets the camera linger on the two main characters, never hurried, and captures as much emotion in their gestures and looks as in their dialogue. But the film does lull at times, perhaps because it's portraying two characters who are themselves stuck. Lynsey and James are both grappling with trauma that they don't quite know how to face. A doctor tells Lynsey that trauma has a stronger link to depression than smoking does to cancer. Her nurse warns her to take it slow, but her mom doesn't seem to fully believe there's anything wrong. Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jayne Houdyshell and Emond are all excellent in these supporting roles.

Causeway adds to a growing body of movies about the impact of the United States' "forever" wars, taking a less common perspective by centering a female veteran. But Lynsey isn't the movie's sole focus or the only character overcoming trauma. Lynsey and James form an unlikely pair, and that's a big part of what makes this film interesting. Their conversations feel real, for the most part, as does the way they seem wary of each other at first and only slowly reveal personal details. There also appears to be symbolism in Lynsey's pool-cleaning job. She eventually has to clean her own pool, and though she's an expert at holding her breath, she also has to come up for air. She semi-jokes that she's been holding her breath for 26 years. The film's slow pace dovetails with its location: It feels like we're on New Orleans time, with frequent mention of the heat and street scenes that capture the city's many contrasts and colors. There's a lot here to appreciate, but the story and its slow-moving stride won't be for everyone.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how substance use is portrayed in Causeway . Why do the characters drink and smoke? Are there realistic consequences? Why does that matter?

The film is set in New Orleans. How does the city play a role in the movie?

Did the characters in this film feel believable? Why, or why not? How does the filmmaking try to create a sense of realism?

How does Lynsey demonstrate perseverance ? Why is that an important character strength?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 4, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : November 4, 2022
• Cast : Jennifer Lawrence , Brian Tyree Henry , Linda Emond
• Director : Lila Neugebauer
• Inclusion Information : Female directors, Female actors, Black actors
• Studio : Apple TV+
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Friendship
• Character Strengths : Perseverance
• Run time : 95 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : some language, sexual references and drug use
• Last updated : June 22, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Causeway Review

04 Nov 2022

2010’s Winter’s Bone — a bleak, uncompromising portrait of poverty and family — felt like the announcement of a major screen talent in Jennifer Lawrence . Causeway , her return to independent filmmaking, is not quite as rich or suspenseful as that early breakthrough, but it shares the same tough, hard edges, showcasing Lawrence as an actor capable of rare emotional depth and resonance. Only her second film in three years, it’s a reminder of what she can do with even the sparsest material.

She plays Lynsey, an army veteran on leave after a bomb leaves her with a traumatic brain injury. A delicately pitched prologue shows her painful initial recovery under the protective watch of a carer played by Jayne Houdyshell (a recent scene-stealer in The Humans and Only Murders In The Building , extending her streak here).

Debut feature director Lila Neugebauer, whose background is in theatre, films all this with a muted, stripped-back naturalism: the realistic mundanities of learning to walk again, the gruelling work required to regain coordination and memory. The filmmaking here is spare and almost aloof. Time-jumps and character progression are implied through editing; plot details are drip-fed slowly. Lawrence plays it with the calm discipline of a military vet, dressed exclusively in unglamorous slacks, invisible emotional armour always deployed.

The filmmaking is so restrained, and the drama so lacking in tension, that we’re left wanting more.

After leaving what we assume to be a medical facility, Lynsey heads to her hometown of New Orleans, to stay in a childhood home full of unhappy memories — an alcoholic mother, an addict brother. It’s here that she meets Brian Tyree Henry ’s kindly car mechanic James. Henry is remarkable here, and easily Lawrence’s match, recalling his devastating performance in If Beale Street Could Talk : another character using wit and charisma to mask pain lurking just below the surface.

Lynsey and James are cut from different cloth, but are inextricably drawn to each other — like many an understated indie before it (see also: Lost In Translation , Blue Valentine ), this is ultimately a story about two lost souls who find each other, troubled people recognising a kind of unspoken solidarity. The exact definitions of their relationship seem forever fuzzy — they go on what seem to be dates, sharing burgers and private pool parties — but the parameters are strictly unromantic, until they’re not.

It’s beautifully mounted, and the deference to realism means nothing ever seems too contrived or implausible. But the filmmaking is so restrained, and the drama so lacking in tension, that we’re left wanting more. Who are these characters, really? What do they have to them, outside of their unresolved trauma? The script, by Elizabeth Sanders, Luke Goebel and Ottessa Moshfegh, has an idea, but the layers have been peeled back so much that it’s unclear, ultimately, what it all amounts to. It’s left to two subtly powerful performers in Lawrence and Henry to fill in the blanks.

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Causeway review: Jennifer Lawrence is back at the top of her game

The affecting drama is now on Apple TV+.

Before her comeback with Don't Look Up , Jennifer Lawrence was pretty open about the act that she hadn't been on the best run . "I was not pumping out the quality that I should have," she admitted in November 2021, and it's hard to disagree.

Lawrence has always been a compelling screen presence even if the likes of Passengers , mother! and Red Sparrow were divisive at best and downright awful at worst. Don't Look Up allowed Lawrence to let loose and was a step in the right direction, but it's her new movie Causeway that officially marks her return to the top.

Directed by Lila Neugebauer, the drama sees Lawrence play military engineer Lynsey who has returned to the US from Afghanistan with a debilitating brain injury following an IED explosion. When she returns home to New Orleans, she not only has to face her new reality, but also her memories.

Watch Causeway on Apple TV+

It's the kind of set-up that screams Oscar bait and you can picture several emotionally dramatic moments perfect for an awards clip. Yet the brilliance of Causeway is that it's anything but that movie you're imagining.

We love to see Lawrence go big as much as anybody, such as her outbursts in Don't Look Up or the intensity of Katniss in the Hunger Games series. Here though, she plays against type with a quiet, unshowy and thoughtful performance, where more is said in the silence than any monologue could do.

Much like with the scars left from her childhood, Lynsey chooses to approach her PTSD with something close to ignorance. She's determined to get back to war to escape her childhood home and fraught relationship with her mother (Linda Emond), regardless of the extra damage it could do to her.

But before she can get back to the war, Lynsey meets local mechanic James (an excellent Brian Tyree Henry) who is suppressing his own personal trauma. As their connection builds into a friendship, they could each prove to be just the person the other needs to come to terms with their history.

The friendship between Lynsey and James forms the core of the majority of Causeway 's plot, with the stars' easy chemistry overcoming any issues with the slightness of the story. It's a movie where the emotion slowly creeps up on you, rather than hitting in waves, as you fully invest in the duo.

By contrast, Lynsey's relationship with her mother is thinly sketched. We learn that her mother lets her down a lot, but that's about it. We find more out about the carer that Lynsey works with at the beginning of the movie, so it's a shame that the family side of Lynsey's past isn't developed more.

Causeway has no easy answers or clean resolutions to offer its audience, a smart decision when trauma has no definitive ending for many. Instead, it shows there's no 'correct' way to process it and in Jennifer Lawrence, the movie couldn't have hoped for a better lead performance to guide the way.

How to watch Causeway online at home

If you fancy checking it out, Causeway is available to watch right now on Apple TV+ for all subscribers.

The streaming service costs £6.99 a month to sign up for if you're not already a subscriber. You also get a seven-day free trial so you could watch Causeway for free and cancel your subscription if you don't fancy anything else Apple TV+ has to offer.

If you do stick around though, we've got you covered with everything that's available to watch right now and the best TV shows to catch up with.

Causeway is available to watch now on Apple TV+ .

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Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor.  Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies , attending genre festivals around the world.   After moving to Digital Spy , initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.  

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Causeway: trailer, reviews, release date and everything we know about the Jennifer Lawrence movie

Jennifer Lawrence returns to her indie roots in Causeway.

For much of the 2010s, Jennifer Lawrence was one of the biggest movie stars in the world — starring in blockbusters like The Hunger Games franchise and being nominated and winning awards, including an Oscar Best Actress trophy. However, in Lawrence’s new movie, Causeway , she is returning to the world of indie dramas that helped launch her career.

Despite its indie feel, this 2022 new movie is going to be widely available for audiences to watch. Here’s what you need to know about that and everything else involved with Causeway .

Causeway release date

Causeway arrives in both movie theaters and the Apple TV Plus streaming service on November 4.

This is just one of the many high-profile Apple TV Plus movies coming in the last few months of 2022, as Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell have the holiday musical Spirited and Will Smith’s next movie, Emancipation , are premiering on the streaming service.

Causeway plot

Written by Ottessa Moshfegh, Luke Goebel and Elizabeth Sanders, Causeway is described as an intimate portrait of a soldier struggling to adjust to her life after returning home to New Orleans.

Here is a more detailed synopsis:

Lynsey, a military engineer, has returned to the States from Afghanistan with a debilitating brain injury after an IED explosion.

It's a painful and slow recovery as she relearns to walk and re-trains her memory, aided by a chatty but tender caretaker. But when she returns home to New Orleans she has to face memories even more aching and formative than those she had in service: a reckoning with her childhood. 

Staying with her mother, with whom she shares a tense relationship, all Lynsey wants to do is return to her work as an engineer. Her doctor is wary, and so in the meantime, she gets a job cleaning pools. When her truck breaks down she meets James Aucoin, who works at the auto repair shop and offers her a ride home. Slowly they start to rely on each other for company and solace. James, it turns out, is also suppressing his own past trauma.  

Causeway trailer

Ahead of the movie's release on November 4, Apple released a second trailer for Causeway that puts a spotlight on the performances of Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry and their characters' relationship. Give it a watch below, as well as the first trailer for the movie:

Who is in the Causeway cast?

Jennifer Lawrence leads Causeway as the ex-soldier Lynsey. While Lawrence is best known to most for her roles as either Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games , Mystique in the X-Men franchise or in her Oscar-winning role in Silver Linings Playbook , Causeway takes her back to the type of indie drama that first put her on the map in Winter’s Bone .

Alongside Lawrence in Causeway are Brian Tyree Henry as Lynsey’s new friend James and Linda Emond as her mother. Henry has really broken out in recent years from a variety of roles, including in the hit TV series Atlanta and movies like Widows , Eternals and Bullet Train . Emond, meanwhile, is a veteran actress who fans are likely to recognize from Succession , The Gilded Age and The Patient .

Other Causeway cast members include Jayne Houdyshell ( Only Murders in the Building ) as Lynsey’s caretaker, Stephen McKinley Henderson ( Fences ) as her doctor, Frederick Weller ( BlackKklansman ) and Russell Harvard ( Fargo ) 

Causeway reviews — what the critics are saying

Causeway first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, where critics gave it a pretty warm reception. As of November 3, the movie has earned a "Certified Fresh" score of 86% on Rotten Tomatoes .

Many of the reviews praise the performances from Lawrence and her co-stars:

Marya E. Gates, RogerEbert.com : "[T]he drama works mostly due to the strong performances from Jennifer Lawrence, Linda Emond and Brian Tyree Henry."

Charles Bramesco, The Playlist : "For whatever inauthenticity might mar the conception of a work more genuine in its execution, we’re just privileged to spend time with two thespians at the top of their formidable game."

Causeway awards and nominations

Here are the major awards and nominations that Causeway has earned:

Los Angeles Film Critics Association

• Best Supporting Performance — Brian Tyree Henry (runner up)

Critics Choice Awards

• Best Supporting Actor — Brian Tyree Henry (nominee)

Film Independent Spirit Awards

• Best Supporting Performance — Brian Tyree Henry (nominee)

Gotham Awards

• Outstanding Supporting Performance — Brian Tyree Henry (nominee)

London Critics Circle Awards

• Supporting Actor of the Year — Brian Tyree Henry (nominee)

How long is Causeway?

Causeway has a total runtime of one hour and 32 minutes.

What is Causeway rated?

Causeway is rated R in the US and 15 in the UK for "some language, sexual references and drug use."

Who is Lila Neugebauer?

Lila Neugebauer is the director of Causeway , her first feature-length movie. The only other credits listed for Neugebauer on IMDb are TV directing gigs for Room 104 , Maid and The Sex Lives of College Girls . However, Neugebauer is an acclaimed director in another medium.

Neugebauer is making the move to movies from the theater world. She has received acclaim for her direction of the off-Broadway plays The Wolves , Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story and Miles for Mary , then again when she made her Broadway debut with The Waverly Gallery , which received a Tony nomination for Best Play and a win for Best Actress (Elaine May).

At the moment, Neugebauer does not have any other TV of movie projects lined up.

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Michael Balderston is a DC-based entertainment and assistant managing editor for What to Watch, who has previously written about the TV and movies with TV Technology, Awards Circuit and regional publications. Spending most of his time watching new movies at the theater or classics on TCM, some of Michael's favorite movies include Casablanca , Moulin Rouge! , Silence of the Lambs , Children of Men , One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Star Wars . On the TV side he enjoys Only Murders in the Building, Yellowstone, The Boys, Game of Thrones and is always up for a Seinfeld rerun. Follow on Letterboxd .

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How ‘The Babadook’ Became the Most Important Horror Movie of the Decade

“If it’s in a word, or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook,” goes the famous line in Jennifer Kent’s 2014 horror classic of that name. Ten years after its original release, though, The Babadook ’s storybook rhyme needs updating: Today, it’s in sitcoms, reality TV competitions, and stop-motion sketch comedy shows, too. Like Amelia (Essie Davis) and her son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), popular culture can’t get rid of the nattily-attired boogeyman; unlike mother and son, pop culture apparently likes keeping him around, if we go by the number of times he’s surfaced in unexpected places over the last decade.

IFCFilms and ICONIC Events are re-releasing The Babadook to commemorate its 10th anniversary, two months ahead of its premiere in U.S. theaters; the movie debuted worldwide at the Sundance Film Festival ’s 2014 edition, and did the rounds at other fests until its November opening. This is great news for the folks who missed the film at the time, comprising “most” on account of the scant number of screens it played on—a sign of the times, predating the horror new wave that crested later in the decade and continues to roll over the industry in 2024. To watch The Babadook now is to witness the seismic event that stirred the wave .

Some viewers didn’t have the luxury of choice to see The Babadook in theaters in 2014; others did, but missed out either for lack of awareness or contemporaneous interest. Now, those viewers, whether longtime horror aficionados or recent converts, can count themselves among the film’s audience anew. That this recursive cycle is in keeping with the nature of the monster itself is a coincidental (but not unwelcome) bit of dovetailing detail.

In the movie, Amelia and Sam find themselves plagued by the Babadook after a pop-up book enumerating its pattern of predation appears on the boy’s bookshelf out of the blue; the creature slithers into its victims’ psyches and drives them mad, as Amelia discovers after reading the book to Sam. Kent’s German Expressionist aesthetic, in the monster’s design as well as the broader mise-en-scène , immediately distinguished The Babadook from its peers in 2014, and does so still, even after horror’s democratization and commercialization, which has always been democratic and commercial, has lifted it to new heights of appreciation while opening doors for new filmmakers keen on leaving their mark on the genre.

Jennifer Kent at the 2018 Venice Film Festival

With The Babadook ’s re-release imminent, we caught up with Kent to unpack the film’s lasting legacy.

There are two things I’m curious about now that we’re at the film’s 10th anniversary: How the text itself has changed and grown in that span of time, and the way the film has become a part of pop culture writ large. To start off with, I’m curious about how your relationship to the movie has changed since 2014.

It’s incredible that the film is being re-released on such a wide scale. From two screens in 2014 to 500 is incredible. I mean, no filmmaker expects that. You expect the other way, for the film to be forgotten. It’s really heartening to me. The reason why I make films, I think, is that you never know the life of it. You just have to make it, and then the life of it is up to the powers that be. I think for this film to be part of popular culture is just something you can’t ever predict or expect. I of course did not think that that would be the case; I just wanted to make this film and have as many people see it as we could get in the cinemas. So, yeah, it’s wonderful. It’s truly wonderful.

There’s Nothing Nice to Say About the ‘Speak No Evil’ Remake

From your point of view, how have you seen the movie incorporate itself into horror? I don’t think there have been many straight up Babadook ripoffs, but I do think there’s been a good deal of references made to it [in horror movies]. How do you take those references and imitations?

I don’t tend to see that. I’m certainly not looking for it. I’m not thinking, “Oh, who’s ripping off my film?”, or, “Who’s taking from it?”, because I think film is a borrowed medium, and by that I mean, before I made The Babadook , I’d watched horror since I was a young kid, which is probably not advisable; my parents need a strict talking to. But I did, and I watched all of it, from Nosferatu onwards. I watched obscure silent horror. I watched everything. So The Babadook is a product of all of that going into me and my system and coming out hopefully as purely from me as I possibly could. It’s a medium where we are influenced by each other.

I can’t say that I wasn’t influenced by everyone that came before, you know, from Rosemary’s Baby and The Tenant to The Innocents to Italian horror— everything . I’m really happy that The Babadook , certainly in Australia, has made it easier for people to make horror films. I mean, I think people were going to make them anyway. But if the success of one film makes it easier for another filmmaker to make their film, great.

A photo still of The Babadook

I don’t think you would have the horror genre if people weren’t borrowing from each other liberally all the time. In a way, though, is that different with The Babadook , because the theme is that this is a monster you can’t get rid of ? Again, if we look through the cannon over the last 10 years, we don’t see a ton of Babadook knockoffs. But in an industrial sense, it’s a forerunner to the [2010s horror boom]. You mentioned that it’s made it easier to make horror movies in Australia. How have you perceived the rising tide of horror, certainly in the U.S., but also globally since 2014?

I think what I’ve noticed is more confidence in the distribution of films that aren’t mainstream horror, and by mainstream, I mean they’re not a franchise. So, you can take a film that’s just good and scary and character based, and a company can get behind it and actually distribute it properly, so that it has a chance to do well, and then they do do well. So that’s what I’m noticing. I think the quality of horror has always been there. It’s just whether it’s seen or not.

And even when the quality isn’t there, if you’re a horror aficionado, you wind up digging through a ton of trash because that’s how you find the good stuff.

Yes, but I would argue that you have to dig through a ton of trash with drama as well, or comedy, or anything. It’s just that horror has this stigma attached to it. But when horror started out, all the best art house European directors directed horror, you know? It’s not a genre that doesn't have its highs as well as its lows.

Colin Farrell Is Masterful in HBO’s Gripping ‘The Penguin’

We’re definitely in a high period right now. There’s certainly the point of pride, in the case of The Babadook , of having been at the beginning of that high. We touched on this briefly at the start, but it must be a very different feeling to see the movie wriggle into shows like Grace and Frankie , You’re the Worst , The Magicians , Robot Chicken , What We Do in the Shadows , or, of course, the 2022 Scream reboot. That’s a separate phenomenon. Is that more surprising to you than the movie’s effect within horror movie culture?

Yeah, it’s a total surprise. How can you ever predict that? When I was making it, in fact, or before, we went to this workshop on how to market your film, which was put on by Screen Australia, or Screen New South Wales, or something at the time in Australia, and they were joking because they knew I was such a purist; they were saying, “Oh, we could have, Babadook trainers, and Babadook jackets!” I was like, oh no.

Funny enough, those would’ve sold well.

Well, they were taking the piss out of me, but when we made the book , I was so proud of that book that went out, and these cultural references, to me, it’s the icing on the cake. It’s amazing to be watching [a film or TV show], and suddenly see your film being referenced in it. It’s surreal, and I’ve loved it. I’m chuffed to see that.

Is there one in particular that won you over? For me, I love You’re the Worst ’s commitment to including a Babadook joke in pretty much every single season.

I didn’t know it was in every season.

I may be wrong. It could just be three of the five seasons.

I saw the one where [Todd Robert Anderson] is saying, “Guys, it’s really scary!” as he’s being dragged out.

They did it again [in Season 4, with Colin Ferguson]! Is that the high for you, too?

The best one for me was RuPaul's Drag Race .

Oh, I didn’t know they did it on that show!

I watched that religiously!

People who watch that show treat it like church, I’ve noticed.

Yeah, it’s my church. So to have a bunch of drag queens talking about your film is just heaven. [laughs] It’s fantastic. But the whole thing, it’s been great. I don’t quite understand it, and I’m totally going with it.

To me, it speaks not just to the fact that, obviously, people liked the film. It found its audience, maybe in spite of odds being against it. But I also think it speaks to the creature itself. What do you think the attraction is to the Babadook itself that draws people to it, whether it’s film, or TV, or LGBTQ+ culture adopting him as an icon?

I honestly don’t know. There’s a theatricality to the whole film, in that it was inspired by early horror, like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , Murnau’s Nosferatu , and Carl Theodor Dreyer—all of these films that have a theatricality to them by virtue of the time they were made. Or even the [Georges] Méliès films that pop up on the TV in The Babadook . All of that TV stuff was carefully orchestrated, but there’s a theatricality to the external part of it.

I also think we are always fascinated by our shadow side, by a part of ourselves that’s subterranean, and dark, and we relate to it. Is it a part of [Amelia] or is it removed from her? Who knows? It’s indefinable. I honestly can’t say this is why people are attracted to it; I’m just glad that they are. I’m glad they’re finding something from it.

Judy Reyes: The No-Nonsense ‘Scrubs’ Star Has ‘High Potential’

What I can say as a filmmaker is, I personally feel it’s important to make films that speak to you as a filmmaker. Look, there's all different types of films in the world and different types of filmmakers, but I can’t make a film unless I feel deeply for the subject matter. If you feel deeply for it, then there’s some slim chance that someone else will as well, and with The Babadook , I guess that’s what happened.

I wonder: How will he adapt to pop culture over the next 10 years? It’s so rare for that to happen.

You know, 10 years isn’t quite a generation, I guess. What is it, 15 years or so? But it’s time enough now for people to go out and see it who’ve never even heard of it or have vaguely heard of it, younger people who can go to the cinema now and see it.

A photo still from The Babadook

I’ve been going to the cinema a lot here. There’s a cinematheque where I live, and they play old films for free. There's nothing better than sitting in a cinema. I watched Dreyer’s Ordet , The Word , with a smaller group of people, but there comes a point in the film where it's so devastating, but also wonderful, where I could hear people starting to cry throughout the cinema, including myself! You can’t beat this experience. We were all feeling this together, a

I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey last Friday night. It was packed. That film on TV? It’s OK. But in the cinema, that’s what it’s meant for. So for The Babadook to be replayed for people to be able to see it, it offers them another experience with the film that you cannot get at home. You just can’t.

Scene by Scene, This Is What Makes the Babadook Such an LGBT Icon

What we’ve struck on now is a whole other thing that movie belongs to: Repertory culture. I saw 2001 in 70mm, and it completely blew me away. This is how movies like that and The Babadook get reintroduced to audiences over and over again. Now, it belongs to a particular class of movie that makes its way back into theaters every so often on the repertory circuit, too.

And talk about church! I mean, in my screening of 2001 , there was some doofus at the back who started thinking it was funny to talk to the screen as if he was in his lounge room, and everyone just went, “Shhsh!” He got the big, the biggest shush you could imagine. People take it seriously because there’s a certain etiquette in the cinema that you must adhere to, or go home. You can’t be on your phone. You have to fully engage with it. That’s what’s brilliant about cinema being in a cinema.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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