‘The Cow’ is empty calories | SXSW review

A couple heads out to a remote cabin for a romantic getaway, but only one of them returns. The Cow follows Winona Ryder's Kath as she unravels the mystery.

Things are not as they seem at the start of Eli Horowitz's feature debut The Cow, which premiered at the 2022 South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin. It's clear, from the eerie score to the intermittent cuts to a mysterious shipping container tucked away in an overgrown field in the forest, that couple Kath (Winona Ryder) and Max's (10 Cloverfield Lane's John Gallagher Jr.) weekend getaway isn't as straightforward as we'd imagine. That becomes abundantly clear when they arrive at the isolated cabin Max has booked and find another couple, Greta (Brianne Tju) and Al (It's Owen Teague), there already. Realizing that the cabin has been double-booked, Greta invites Kath and Max to share the space for the night, to which Kath reluctantly agrees.

After a mostly innocent night of games and conversation, Kath turns in for the night. She doesn't feel quite right in the group. It makes sense considering there's an age difference between her and Max, who is in his 20s like Greta and Al. When she wakes the next morning, Greta and Max are gone. When she finds Al he reveals that he found the pair hooking up and that they ran off together. A confused and distraught Kath leaves the cabin behind — and the mystery of where Max went off to. Sometime later, though, she decides that she owes it to herself to find out what happened for him to run off so suddenly. With the help of the cabin's owner (Dermot Mulroney), she slowly finds herself unraveling exactly what happened which is more sinister, as promised.

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The Cow has a lot of ideas it's trying to grapple with while also maintaining its mystery. Greta and Al are admonished as typical young ultra-progressives who describe that they're together, but “not in that capitalist consumerist cis-normative bullshit way.” At another point in a flashback, one of Kath's friends chides to Max, “who knew it was so expensive to look like you don't give a shit.” It's that kind of ham-fisted commentary on “wokeness” that bogs down screenplay. If you removed those scenes and only included the mystery elements The Cow would make for a compelling-enough short film.

The final act of the movie shows the most promise for Eli Horowitz as a filmmaker as the pieces of the movie's non-linear narrative finally form a clearer picture and moves it to a full-tilt genre movie, which I'm almost hesitant to say because the largely flat second act never gives you hints towards its conclusion. Perhaps that's the movie's problem. It doesn't earn its admittedly interesting twist, and what is in place of a proper build is difficult to stomach.

I wish I had more positive things to say about The Cow if only because Winona Ryder deserves more starring roles. And while she does the best she can with the material she's given, it all feels like empty calories.

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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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