Hurt

After her husband Robert dies in a car crash, Helen Coltrane (Melora Walters) and her teenaged children, Lenore (Johanna Braddy) and Conrad (Jackson Rathbone), move in with her brother-in-law Darryl (William Mapother), who lives in a junkyard he owns outside of Scottsdale, AZ. In her first feature, Polish director/co-writer Barbara Stepansky alternates between the viewpoints of Helen, Conrad, and Lenore, none of whom are especially happy about leaving the family home to live among broken-down cars, trucks, and heaps of scrap metal. Helen, a diabetic and semi-retired jewelry maker, only plans to stay with Darryl until the family's settlement check comes in, despite the fact that he has long nursed amorous feelings for her. Soon, Helen's attorney introduces her to Sarah (Sofia Vassilieva), a foster child Robert used to look in on, who claims he had promised to give her a home. A former foster child herself, Helen decides to let the soft-spoken girl stay with them, but then inexplicable and unsettling events unfold. Although the opening of Hurt resembles a low-key domestic drama, Stepansky shifts the story more towards a psychological thriller, with Sarah's jealousy of the Coltranes, particularly Lenore, crossing into the pathological. Well-directed and acted (particularly by Walters), Hurt proves more effective than most films in its genre. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)