Can there be a worse pain than a parent losing their child? Writer/director Evan Ari Kelman certainly does not think so, coaxing a staggeringly raw performance from underrated actor Garrett Hedlund as the grieving father. Here, the searing pain goes so deep that nothing else matters but getting justice. Emotionally devastating and morally complex, Barron’s Cove presents a chilling take on grief in this grim, slow-burn thriller.
The whole tragedy gets off the ground in the opening scene, where a group of three boys are involved in a horrible train accident. Not until a little while later do we realize the true gravity of this scenario. Suffice to say, Barron’s Cove takes children in peril to an awful extreme. Caleb (Hedlund, Tron: Legacy, On the Road), a construction site inspector, neglects to pick up his son, Barron (Dante Hale), from school. Unbeknownst to Caleb, Barron’s mother, Jackie (Brittany Snow, X, Pitch Perfect), never receives his message about retrieving their child. By the time Caleb shows up frantically to the scene of the crime, he is too late. Though the body has been completely destroyed from the force of the train, Caleb and Jackie must face their new reality: Barron has died under unimaginable circumstances.
Completely stricken by his suffering, Caleb demands answers. He initially has a meltdown at the police station, forcibly trying to question a young boy, Ethan (Christian Convery, Beautiful Boy, The Monkey), who was present when Barron died. To complicate matters, Ethan is the adopted child of Senator Lyle (Hamish Linklater, Midnight Mass, Nickel Boys). In a swift manner, Barron’s case gets ruled as a suicide, and then abruptly closed. Hopelessly lost and without answers, Caleb vows to get to the bottom of the murder no matter what it takes. He violently snatches Ethan from school and abducts him, prepared to torture out the answers about his son’s demise. What initially seems like a mystery about a tragic accident unfurls into a brutal, emotionally layered story of grief, corruption, and generational trauma.
Against all odds, Caleb and Ethan begin to bond—this only works thanks to the strengths of turns from Hedlund and Convery, respectively. Both heartbroken father and defiant youth have storied pasts, and are more complex characters than it would initially appear. The two are brought together by impossible circumstances. Whether Caleb was always a broken person before the events of the film proper is not entirely clear, but the viewer can fill in the blanks about his relationship with Barron. Kelman opts to forgo flashback, pushing the moral ambiguity and gifting no easy answers. Caleb and Ethan’s relationship evolves from hostile abduction to something almost tender—two broken souls bonded by trauma. The script allows both to be flawed and reactive, adding a rare emotional complexity. These are just people trying to survive pain.
On the tertiary side, Stephen Lang (Don’t Breathe, Avatar) plays Caleb’s twisted boss, whilst Severance standout Tramell Tillman fills the role of Caleb’s friend Felix, and Raúl Castillo (Looking, Army of the Dead) shines as committed Detective Navarro. Castillo gets the most to do out of the three, as he tries to work with Jackie to get to the bottom of the case. He notices something off about it from the beginning, especially as no signs actually point to the boy’s death being a suicide. Publicly, a narrative gets painted by the Senator and his team that does not seem reflective of the actual truth. By movie’s end, we get the answers we seek as audience members that only reinforce the complexity of the event itself.
A genuinely devastating final image firmly underlines the deeper themes of Barron’s Cove. Can grief drive a person past the point of no return? Can it offer redemption? The world is certainly not as black and white as one would want it to be in regards to a literal child death. Maybe the point Evan Ari Kelman is trying to make revolves around the absolute insane unpredictability of life. Come for Garrett Hedlund’s unforgettable performance, and stay for the nuanced character drama and surprising depth.
Book a trip to Barron’s Cove, but don’t expect it to be a feel-good stay. It comes to theaters and Video on Demand on Friday, June 6th.
