When taking on the difficult topic of America’s drug crises, most films deal with the language of clear-cut protagonists and antagonists. The Evening Hour is much more concerned with treading the seldom-spoken line of the characters who fall somewhere in between. Based on the 2012 Carter Sickels novel of the same name, Braden King’s film follows Cole Freeman (Philip Ettinger), a resident of a small Appalachian town who works as an aide at a nursing home and sells oxycodone to locals on the side. Having grown up in the area, Cole uses his familiarity with the older townsfolk to purchase their prescriptions from them for resale to his buyers. This double life starts to weigh on him when an old friend Terry Rose (Cosmo Jarvis) relocates to the town in hopes to get in on the operation.
Films as patient and tender as The Evening Hour rarely pack a heavy punch, but King manages to humanize his characters by finding the hard truths in their ill-advised intentions. Cole and everyone in his town are victims of circumstance, people just trying to make ends meet in ways that help some while hurting others. There is no easy answer given, just a question of what drives people to make the choices they make. The film is lensed by veteran cinematographer Declan Quinn (Leaving Las Vegas, Rachel Getting Married), who captures this town in elegant frames that suggest a once-thriving community led astray by deprivation of education, access to care, and employment.
This is a haunting and accurate depiction of a large percentage of American life. In 2018 alone, overdose mortality rates for those aged 25-54 were 43% higher in the Appalachian region than in the rest of the United States. The urgency of this issue is not lost on King. The reflective nature of his film conveys a longing for a day when communities like this will have access to the resources needed to put an end to their opioid crisis. The Evening Hour is an exceptional example of a fictional story that does not shy away from important social issues. It would make a great addition to any librarian’s media collection, especially those specializing in drama or sociology. It would also be suitable for library programming or classroom syllabi focusing on drug education.
Discover more titles for your film collection in our list of drama movies.