Rose of Nevada (2025)

Ghost Ships, Time Slips - Rose of Nevada review by griggs

I went in wary after bouncing hard off Enys Men, but Rose of Nevada turned out to be much more my speed. It’s still unmistakably Mark Jenkin – scratchy 16mm textures, post-synced voices, slightly off-kilter cutting – but this time that style is wrapped around an actual ghost-ship yarn with a clearer spine.

A trawler lost 30 years ago drifts back into a battered Cornish harbour, and two men sign on hoping for a fresh start. From there it slides, almost casually, into time-slip territory. Past and present bleed into each other as the Rose creaks in the swell, radios crackle and the gulls sound just a bit wrong. Jenkin’s Cornwall feels properly lived-in: the weary pub, the half-forgotten quay, the sense of a place left behind.

George MacKay, as ever, is rock solid, wearing the film’s strangeness like it’s the most natural thing in the world, with Callum Turner a nice, needling foil. It still won’t convert everyone to Jenkin’s wavelength, and a stretch or two is a touch baggy, but once it locks in, it’s oddly, eerily captivating.