Metacritic reviews

Writer/director Nicole Riegel brings such richness to all of her characters that they feel authentic, garnering empathy.

While the broad strokes of Riegel’s story might sound familiar, Holler finds its power in the particularities, especially Barden’s unfussy and wholly believable performance.

[Barden] becomes the vessel to express Riegel’s quiet cri de coeur, which is not just yearning to escape one’s own circumstances but the absolute necessity of it.

Much of Holler’s plotting feels driven by issues (factory layoffs, opioids) rather than allowing those issues to naturally exist within the narrative, but Adlon brings an exhausted authenticity to the film that makes up for it.

Holler succeeds at putting a human face on large-scale economic trends, telling a suspenseful coming of age story that shows the true cost of lost opportunity.

The real tragedy is that all of the characters in Holler seem incomplete.

The film’s texture is in the details. There’s nothing glamorous about this kind of subsistence, and nothing invented.

The specificity and authenticity of its setting are the biggest thing Holler has going for it, given that indie drama is rife with variations on this type of social realist coming-of-age tale. The gloomy mood also tamps down thriller elements that appear late in the story, which leaves little but despair for the audience to chew on.

We feel the futility of this reality with every exasperated sigh Blaze lets loose and defeated look that escapes Ruth’s usually stoic demeanor.

Riegel seems to still be hung up on Winter’s Bone, making a slavishly imitative film with few flourishes that allow it to stand on its own.