Fifteen minutes into John Rosman’s elegantly scripted and emotionally harrowing debut feature, New Life, you’re wired into the psyche of Jessica Murdock, a young woman fleeing an unspecified old life and grappling with primitive elements of survival: where to sleep and what to eat. And, within a few scenes, where to live, find a job and rebuild. In her impressive feature debut, a fierce Hayley Erin brings both a feral intensity as well as a wary calm to these moments, which are of the sort found in many independent films dealing with women leaving bad relationships, or of those searching […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 3, 2024