Hands That Bind: Creepy and Unsettling Prairie Gothic with Paranormal Overtones

By Chris Knight

Rating: A-minus

Creepy and spellbinding, the Prairie Gothic film Hands That Bind is set in middle-of-nowhere Alberta during the recession of the early 1980s.

Work in the oil fields has dried up, and so Dirk Longridge (Landon Liboiron) returns to the farm where his aging father (Nicholas Campbell) is scraping out a living with the help of hardworking farmhand Andy Hollis (Paul Sparks).

Andy, with a wife (Susan Kent), two young kids and few other job prospects, was openly hoping that he might take over the farm from the old man one day. Dirk has other ideas. In fact, when he shows up, his first words to Andy are a barked command, as though speaking to a servant who was part of the property, little more than chattel.

A brutish lout with city-slicker hair, Dirk is a real piece of work. If it weren’t for his nasty streak, he’d have no personality at all. Andy takes an instant disliking to him - hardly alone in that reaction - and starts wondering how he’ll manage, now that he’s losing both his job and the modest home that came with it. Offers from his wife to pick up some work at the local hospital are soundly rebuffed. It’s the man’s job to provide. But what if he can’t?

Canadian writer/director Kyle Armstrong has crafted an unsettling narrative that manages to weave together dreamlike images with an actual plot - this isn’t one of those atmosphere-and-nothing-else thrillers. I was reminded of Jordan Peele’s Nope more than once, and also of Jonathan Glazer’s excellent sci-fi horror Under the Skin.

That’s because, in addition to the weird dreamlike passages, there are scenes of actual weirdness going on. Andy, acting on a tip from a crusty old neighbour (Bruce Dern), finds that one of the farm’s cows has been mutilated with a surgical precision beyond the skills of wolves or even rustlers. Then another deceased bovine is discovered lodged in a tree. And what to make of those lights on the horizon, like something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

There are no ready answers, although the film leaves itself open to multiple interpretations. I can imagine an entire thesis built around it being a commentary on colonialism - in the opening scene, Andy finds an ancient arrowhead and then throws it away - but one could also watch the film without ever giving that reading a second thought.

You could also lean into the way the movie offers several arguably dated suggestions for what it means to be a real man - provider, husband, father, worker, handyman and, in the case of Dirk, chauvinist. “Hold my beer while I dance with your wife,” he instructs Andy in the town bar one night, before picking a fight with another guy and getting himself tossed out on his ass.

The action gradually wends its way closer and closer to some real no-turning-back-from-this violence, but I won’t say whether it eventually crosses that line; only that the final act is surprising, disturbing and a little open-ended.

Oh, and one other thing: If you look up other reviews for this atmospheric thrill ride, you’ll find the term “slow burn” comes up more than once. Not so sure about that though; when they set a match to the dead cow in the tree, it went up pretty quickly by my reckoning.

Hands That Bind. Directed by Kyle Armstrong. Starring Paul Sparks, Landon Liboiron, and Susan Kent. Opens in theatres, Friday, November 3.