SXSW 2025 Reviews: ‘The Dutchman,’ ‘$POSITIONS,’ ‘We Bury the Dead’

Ryan McQuade March 15, 2025

Sometimes you go to a festival and they aren’t all winners. Over the last couple of years, I’ve gone to film festivals and seen some of the best films of the year, and within the same day, I’ve also witnessed the entire mood change because of watching a bad movie. It’s all about the balance my friends (cue the score from The Substance). In this last dispatch from the 2025 SXSW Film Festival, the spotlight is on three films from the Narrative Spotlight section of the program, and while there are a few good things to say about them, they overall were a bit of a disappointment in terms of anticipation, the talent attached, the handling of the subject matter contained within the film, and so much more. Kudos to all of these films though, as they were all under an hour and forty minutes, so whatever pain they may have caused, it was short lived.

The Dutchman (Dir. Andre Gaines)

Clay (André Holland) and Kaya’s (Zazie Beetz) marriage is hanging on by a thread. While Clay has been distant from his wife for several months because of his work on his friend Warren’s (Aldis Hodge) political campaign, Kaya has had an affair and now they are in couple’s therapy trying to save what is left of their relationship. After a rough session, Dr. Amiri (Stephen McKinley Henderson) pulls Clay aside and tells him that he seems stressed, and offers him a non-medication form of treatment; a play to read called Dutchman. Clay refuses to take it, and by doing so, opens himself up for vulnerability in the form of Lula (Kate Mara), a scandalously dressed white woman he meets on the train home that seduces Clay, only for us to quickly discover she is death incarnate, and wants to not just consume Clay’s soul, but his racial identity and dignity as well. Based on the renowned play by Amiri Baraka, The Dutchman is a bland, uninteresting, embarrassing examination of modern racial politics and dynamics. What is even worse than its dated conversations about race between Holland and Mara (who do whatever they can to make this script work), is that it is a poor excuse for a psychological thriller, with every twist and turn coming from a mile away. In the directorial debut for Andre Gaines, he sucks the urgency and timeliness out of his adaptation of radical play, and is never able to elevate the film visually in any way. With each scene looking like it just got out of a steam room, the foggy cinematography, matched with the spotty dialogue of the script, and the lackluster performances, makes The Dutchman a ship not worth sailing on. One moment stuck out to me, as Dr. Amiri is talking to Clay and mentions that we find pieces of ourselves in art, and in the case of The Dutchman, Gaines and his team don’t allow the audience to find much of anything to attach themselves to or connect with in this redundant, tedious film.

Grade: D-

The Dutchman is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

$POSITIONS (Dir. Brandon Daley)

What if someone took the style of the Safdie Brothers and placed it inside the Midwest? Well then you would get Brandon Daley’s debut feature $POSITIONS, which follows Mike (Michael Kunicki), a factory worker who is slowly becoming obsessed with the world of cryptocurrency. Living with his brother Vinny (Vinny Kress) and their alcoholic father (Guido Z Cameli), he’s been working the same job for eight years, till one day, he sees that his crypto has hit $35,000 dollars, and he is quitting his job because in his words, “he’s rich.” But as we all know, stocks go up and they come down, and while celebrating too much, Mike sees everything slowly slip away, only for him to have to spend the rest of the film fighting and clawing his way back to a position where he can recoup the money he’s lost, pay off his debts, and become “rich” all at the same time. It’s shocking how much Daley puts his main character through the ringer, having him fail over and over again, to the point of exhaustion. The character is only effective though if the performance at the center of the film works, and for the most part, Kunicki knocks his role out of the part, alongside Kress and Trevor Dawkins, who plays Travis, their cousin who recently became sober from his heroin addiction, as well as a born again Christian (though he doesn’t stay that way long sober for long, with a nod to his religion in a hilarious, drug trip scene toward the end). But the main problem with $POSITIONS is its pacing, as Daley is not able to continue a kinetic momentum for each of his acts, with the first and third act of the film being a stellar examination of greed and desperation rolled up together with violence, drugs, and a whole lot of yelling. If the second act was as tight and wild as the rest of the film, it might have landed as a whole, but $POSITIONS is a film that you’ll most likely sell on early rather than wait around to see if it is worth the full investment.

Grade: C+

$POSITIONS is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

We Bury the Dead (Dir. Zak Hilditch)

Don’t know if many of you have been keeping up with the news but the American government isn’t really batting one-hundred right now. And at the start of Zak Hilditch’s We Bury the Dead, man we look dumb as hell. In the Tasman Sea, a United States military experiment goes wrong as a bomb is set off near the shoreline of Tasmania, setting off an electrical pulse that sends a shockwave to the brain of every human on the island, rendering them dead on the spot. As the Australian government is going through a diplomatic hell with the US over this mess, it is discovered that if people wake up, they come back as flesh eating zombies (a mix of World War Z and The Last of Us in terms of the creature design, just on a lower budget). It’s at this point where we meet Ava (Daisy Ridley), an American physical therapist that has volunteered to come to the island to help identify the missing people for their loved ones that weren’t affected by the catastrophic event. But her mission isn’t just a humanitarian one, as she has also come to the island with the goal of finding her husband, and providing some closure to their rocky marriage that was left on bad terms before he left for a business trip. She is partnered with Clay (Brenton Thwaites), and as the two form a bond in locating bodies, and evading zombies, they make a deal to go and find Ava’s husband. Hilditch’s world building for an indie budget is impressive, alongside Ridley and Thwaites, who have incredible chemistry and give the film a grounded element of humanity as two damaged people trying to use this mission as a chance to forgive themselves for their pasts.

We Bury the Dead is good when it is a two-hander, but it is even better when it is just focused on Ridley, who has moments here where she gets to rummage through his wasteland with nothing more than an ax and a limp in her step. She, alongside Steve Annis’ cinematography, are the best in show here, and she continues to deliver fascinating, layered performances in various inspired films post her time in Star Wars. But all of this is leveled out by a questionable, Cloverfield-esque sequence involving a rogue military soldier and him losing his wife and child that forces Ridley’s Ava to play along with the soldier’s sick game of playing house. While the metaphor is there for a person handling the grief of this tragedy in the most diabolical way imaginable, it just doesn’t fit what is going on with the rest of the film, losing focus on Ava’s story and a chance to give us more backstory and context to her character. It’s a misstep that derails the momentum of the somber action drama we’ve watched before these scenes and the movie tries so hard to get back to where we were before, but we aren’t given enough time to gain the momentum back. It’s a shame because there is a lot to like about Hilditch’s vision, overall scope of the film, and the performance from Ridley, but in leaning a little too much into the horror version of the zombie genre, it cost the film immensely.

Grade: C-

We Bury the Dead is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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Ryan McQuade

Ryan McQuade is the AwardsWatch Executive Editor and a film-obsessed writer in San Antonio, Texas. Raised on musicals, westerns, and James Bond, his taste in cinema is extremely versatile. He’s extremely fond of independent releases and director’s passion projects. Engrossed with all things Oscars, he hosts the AwardsWatch Podcast. He also is co-host of the Director Watch podcast. When he’s not watching movies, he’s rooting on all his favorite sports teams, including his beloved Texas Longhorns. You can follow him on Twitter at @ryanmcquade77.