/ Critic / 
/ Anywhere (2024) | Dir. Adam Seidel / 
/ ★★★½☆

Living with existential crises born from the wrong choices we make has become part of the mental “behind the scenes” of daily life. Therapy, addictions, and feed overload are all there to numb troubled hearts.

That is easy to observe or talk about… but facing those choices in practice demands far more from us, and becomes a moment in life that inspires  endless creativity and a dark kind of curiosity.

Anywhere is a post-traumatic thriller that explores this theme quite well. Its climax functions almost like a prologue, introducing us to John Carlson (Josh Burge), already fed up with the consequences of the choices he made (or failed to make).

He is an oil industry worker in Oklahoma who discovers that his wife, Syd (Hayley McFarland), was planning to run off to Los Angeles with his brother, Cody (Ryan Francis). As expected, the confrontation ends in violence… triggering a cascade of desperate choices that must now coexist not only with the aftermath of the crime, but with the moral weight of moving forward. Adam Seidel’s interest is in guilt, silence, ruins, and the reinvention of identity.

It is a film about past and future “what ifs.”

The environment speaks for itself here. Anywhere plays with how settings shape human transformation. In this rural neo-noir, Oklahoma’s landscapes heighten the protagonists’ sense of isolation… social and psychological. Adam Seidel mentioned in interviews that his visual touchstone was always the image of an isolated cabin by the roadside, a car in the garage, and nothing else around. This environmental grip on character development closely echoes the first season of True Detective, Fargo, and the series The Third Day.

The music seamlessly accompanies these introspective dialogues between characters and endless fields or highways. Cory Perschbacher’s musical direction plays with spaces and silences from Ry Cooder or Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos. Make no mistake: the soundtrack is a key element that hooks the audience from the opening minutes.

No one tells you the year or the context; you feel it through the missing technology and the kind of talk that hasn’t aged well. There are no smartphones (though they are already talked about), nor is there any filter to soften toxic masculinity. Seidel trusts the viewer to figure out how close or far away they are without handing them the answers.

With his theater background, Seidel brings to cinema a voice filled with morally ambiguous characters, all immersed in the consequences of their obsessions. Anywhere prioritizes dialogue, tension, and emotional discomfort among its leads: John has something internal to take care of, while Syd has something external to conquer.

This narrative approach resonates within Joshua Burge’s own filmography. From Buzzard to Relaxer, through The Revenant and now Anywhere… the actor has a collection of ordinary men confronted by bizarre circumstances: survivors of physical violence, economic hardship, and emotional and existential pressures.

All of this highlights the enduring strength of independent cinema when it chooses to simply observe people. The suspense doesn’t lie in the moment life changes… but in the act of carrying on afterward (with brand‑new lives).

PS. Sean Gunn delivers a strong performance… even while playing a man who is one nut short of inner peace.