There is nothing overtly genre about Mark Jenkin’s debut feature, Bait (2019) – a woozy class-divide drama centred on the simmering tensions between locals and tourists in a once-thriving Cornish fishing village. Yet there is something in its analogue, low-fidelity aesthetic that feels primed for something darker, as though menace is lurking just beneath the grainy surface. Jenkin edged closer to horror with Enys Men, a disorientating and deeply atmospheric film about a wildlife volunteer whose stay on an uninhabited island off the Cornish coast begins to erode her grip on reality. Critics certainly embraced it more enthusiastically than general audiences (the Rotten Tomatoes score makes that fairly clear) but, in our view, it remains a fascinating slice of experimental folk horror with unmistakable echoes of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. It also arrived at a moment when liminal and lo-fi horror were beginning to carve out a genuine foothold within the genre. Films like Skinamarink (2022), Broadcast Signal Intrusion (2021) and The Outwaters (2022) are all prime examples of this growing trend: films that fuse our fascination with nostalgia and obsolete technology with horrors driven more by atmosphere and unease than conventional plotting. They are not to everyone’s taste, admittedly, but interest in this peculiar corner of horror seems to be steadily growing, and upcoming films like Backrooms suggest that fascination is far from fading. The strong critical reception of Jenkin’s latest film, Rose of Nevada, only reinforces that point.

In a small, run-down Cornish village, a trawler – the Rose of Nevada – suddenly appears in the harbour thirty years after vanishing, along with its crew. The tragedy still hangs over the town like sea mist and, to make matters worse, the boat’s disappearance coincided with the collapse of the local fishing industry. Several of the village’s older residents interpret the vessel’s return as a kind of omen and assemble a new crew in the hope of reviving the struggling local economy. A somewhat mysterious salty sea dog (played by Francis Magee) volunteers to skipper the voyage, joined by Nick (George MacKay), a down-on-his-luck young father desperate for cash, and Liam (Callum Turner), a drifter with no fixed abode who is equally eager to make a bit of money. The fishing trip proves a success and the trio return with a big haul, much to the delight of the locals. But there is a catch (pun very much intended). They appear to have slipped backwards in time to the early 1990s. The village is thriving once more, and the local pub hums with happy punters. Nick returns to the site of his present-day home hoping to find his wife and daughter. Naturally, they are nowhere to be found. And if things were not strange enough already, the couple next door insist that Nick is their son – one of the original crew members aboard the Rose of Nevada when it first disappeared. Confused? Good. You’re supposed to be.

This sense of confusion and disorientation is the whole point though. For the most part, we are witnessing this story play out through the eyes of Nick – a man who is as thoroughly befuddled but somewhat more exasperated than we are as the audience. There is a dreamlike logic to the events that transpire, but like a hazy, half-remembered dream, there are gaps, repetitions, and moments that seem strangely out of joint or simply wrong. Trying to piece everything together into a neat, definitive conclusion is a tall order, yet it feels as though we are meant to surrender to the journey rather than obsess over the destination. Jenkin’s singular filmmaking approach heightens this atmosphere of immersion and unease. Rose of Nevada was shot silently on 16mm, with the dialogue and sound post-synchronised afterwards. The result is a subtly off-kilter texture: the audio feels faintly tinny yet oddly intense, while the grainy, high-contrast visuals resemble a retro Instagram filter. You can almost feel the heat pressing down from the Cornish sky, taste the salt in the air, and smell the hundreds of fish hauled dripping onto the boat. And, much like Enys Men, there are flashes of pinkish red that jut into the frame like visual alarms - the boat itself, Liam’s cap. There are also flickers of horror too, with a handful of genuinely unnerving images and an older character whose mere presence is a little unsetting. Threaded through it all is a metronomic, synth-heavy score, also composed by Jenkin, which only deepens the film’s growing sense of illusion and unreality.

Dialogue is relatively sparse, with Jenkin far more interested in conveying meaning through imagery and sound than through conversation. Yet the film risks drifting too far into abstraction without some emotional anchor, and George MacKay provides precisely that with his performance as Nick. It is his predicament that supplies the true horror at the heart of Rose of Nevada. While time travel is so often treated as a vehicle for wonder, adventure, or comedy, there is little amusement to be found in the possibility of never seeing your family again. MacKay captures this escalating desperation with remarkable intensity as Nick’s attempts to grasp hold of his reality grow increasingly anguished. Almost everyone around him appears oblivious to his predicament, which only compounds his isolation. Liam (Callum Turner), meanwhile, experiences the inverse. He has gone from having nothing to gaining a new family - yet even this apparent blessing is fraught with complications and quiet sorrows of its own.

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This is undeniably a film that demands attention, however, and viewers seeking narrative clarity or an ending in which every loose end is tied together neatly may find much of it frustrating. The interpretive nature of Jenkin’s filmmaking will not resonate with everyone. You either succumb to its strange, hypnotic spell and lose yourself in its sensory experience, or remain at a distance from it entirely. As you probably can tell, we’re very much the former.