This independent film, topped by the Grand Jury Prize at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. A small-budget indie film funded by Netflix, it gives us another glimpse of what diversified money like Netflix and Amazon, injected into the North American film market, has brought.

In addition to the Oscar hits of 2017, all of which were financed by Amazon Studios, more independent productions are being supported by Neflix. The director of this Nowhere to Call Home, of course, is no unknown, having starred in Blue Ruin and The Green Room, both small budget hits. I believe this has brought more attention to his first feature film, which he wrote and directed.

The film also features a revamped Elijah Wood from the Lord of the Rings series and a supernatural New Zealand actress, Melanie Lynskey, to add to the cast of this quality crime comedy.

The story of the heroine whose home is robbed, thus forcing her to embark on her own search for the thugs, captures the audience’s attention right from the start. The plot is set up, in fact, very simply. After a few minor life events, a bad day at work, a rude passerby, a dramatic reading of a novel, and other bad things, she returns home to find that her computer and her loved ones’ jewellery have been ransacked. This is the kind of thing that can’t be tolerated, but it happens one after the other.

Ruth’s life is completely disrupted and she feels that people in this society are “bastards”. People are always preying on each other, and she is so angry she can’t breathe. The little things that we can all relate to in life, such as being jumped in line or robbed, quickly put the audience on the side of the heroine. Ruth stays over at a friend’s house, and the next morning, after receiving a gift from a child’s drawing, the “Ruth on the stegosaurus” in the drawing really goes berserk. The film moves on to the second act, where the heroine is about to make her move.

The first person Ruth fights back against is a dog walker who shits on her lawn. The film is a concise and amusing introduction to the character’s partner, a dog named Kevin, whose owner is Tony, played by Elijah Wood, who has Chinese lanterns in his backyard, Tai Chi hangings in his window, and always wears a pair of ninja shoes, practices nunchaku, and has short hair with a pigtail at the back of his head. He also yells at Kevin, who is going crazy, “Quiet!” He was also a Christian, and his obsession with Eastern culture was evident.

At the same time, Tony is a Christian. He never fails to pray for God’s blessing as he accompanies Ruth on her quest for evil and justice. The whole film echoes the theme of the need for people to help each other, whether you ask for God’s help or your neighbour’s help, everyone is the same. So in the opening scene of the film, Ruth, the heroine, is alone, sighing under the cold starry sky, while at the end, under the warm sunset, is a barbecue party with her neighbours.

The dramatic conflict of the story begins with Ruth’s tightly wound life, and finds its thrill from the return of justice, little by little, all the way to the climax. The plot of the film, whenever we fall into the conventional crime movie clichéd thinking, always surprises us. Whether it’s the recovery of the notebook or the battle for the silverware, the audience never knows what’s going to happen next, and that’s what makes crime dramas so fascinating.

At 93 minutes, the film officially moves towards its violent climax after an hour. The character of Ruth, however, will continue to break the audience’s bottom line, partly because of the contrasts in her character and behaviour, and partly because of the clever set-up of the plot to defuse the problem.

This small budget film has only a few main characters and a few houses in a residential area, plus a jungle, as its main setting. But the film’s atmosphere, created by the language of the camera, is not at all rudimentary. Together with the sound effects, the scenes of the home invasion and the chase between the characters are infectious, even with the simplest of camera shakes.

Last year’s 10 Clover Road, a typical story of a secret room escape, was described by some as having a format more like a student graduation production. This ‘Nowhere to Call Home’, on the other hand, is similarly stunning in its small storytelling and, more unusually, in the way it constantly brings freshness to the audience. Stories that force ordinary people to fight back by the skin of their teeth never go out of fashion.