Independent Film Festival Boston 2010

A close but fractured family planted firmly in the dwindling town of Ilion in New York’s Mohawk Valley, the Moshers are unable to escape their generational ghosts—the cyclic sorrows of their history. Don is a Vietnam War vet who has closed off his deepest feelings and worst memories, thereby losing almost all traces of his youthful warmth; meanwhile, his wife, Dottie, overcompensates with optimism. Her family is defined by disappointments, yet she is always hopeful—and so her hopes are endlessly dashed. She takes in and dotes on Chris, a foster child who burglarizes her home. Her daughter and granddaughter, Donna and Daneal, share pasts defined by domestic abuse and children lost to court systems. Don’s estranged sister Denise is an unemployed and probably hypochondriac pagan. Donna’s second daughter, Desi, hates the horrors of her heritage and hometown. Smart and sardonic, Desi is entirely aware of her family’s faults and desires a better life, but can only escape into video games and the costumed reverie of Halloween, the clan’s defining holiday. Metaphoric specters are the picture’s central theme, invisibly present throughout.

Addressing their problems as armchair psychologists, the Moshers are still unable to stop decline and repeat missteps. Although half of the directorial duo is an unmentioned family member, OCTOBER COUNTRY remains impressively neutral—never damning its sweetly sad characters, but evidencing their humanity by their deep, dynastic wounds and family phantoms.

—Daniel Barnum-Swett