The experience of watching a Mark Jenkin film is defined by specificity. The Cornish filmmaker not only writes and directs his projects, but acts as cinematographer, editor, sound designer, and composer, and his signature in all those roles is remarkably distinct. As attentive to detail as you become watching his work, it’s the atmosphere those details conjure in unison that’s most striking. From the moment the movie begins, it feels like being dropped in another world, or another time – or a world that belongs to another time. When I reviewed Enys Men for ScreenRant in 2023, I was awed by the use of form on display, but wished for more of a narrative backbone to hold all that atmosphere together. Rose of Nevada, Jenkin’s latest film, supplies it. The haunted, slippery feeling of his movies is very effective when applied to a supernatural mystery, and that sense of full understanding being just out of reach becomes something pulling you further in, rather than pushing you out. For something so deliberately paced, I found it completely gripping.
George MacKay & Callum Turner Are Ideal Anchors For Rose Of Nevada

Rose of Nevada is named for a fishing boat that, thirty-some years after being lost at sea, suddenly reappears one morning, moored at the harbor of a Cornish village. As Jenkin shows us, through a series of wonderfully textured insert shots, the town is in bad shape. The once-thriving fishing business has long since dried up, and most people left with it. But there are still some who recognize this boat the moment they see it. Two of its crew never came home when it disappeared; the third killed himself out of the guilt of having let them go out shorthanded. The whole village never really recovered. Mike (Edward Rowe) and Tina (Rosalind Eleazar), who first notice the boat’s return, determine to “try again” – a decision that apparently shouldn’t be broadcast. Mike starts looking for a new crew. An experienced fisherman named Murgey (Francis Magee), seems to materialize out of nowhere to volunteer himself as captain. Liam (Callum Turner), a drifter in need of some cash, welcomes the job. And Nick (George MacKay), who has a loving wife and daughter at home, takes it to get enough money to fix a leak in their roof. They go out to sea, learn the trade, and all goes smoothly. Despite what the deadness of the town would suggest, the fishing seems to be plentiful. But they don’t return to quite the same place they left. It’s now 1993; the Rose of Nevada has returned to port as if it never went missing.

…the ambiguity works in its favor, creating the spooky feeling we get anytime we brush up against something we can’t quite explain.

The harbor is busy with fishing boats. The town is flush with people and cash. Tina, now a young mother, mistakes Liam for her partner Alan, one of the disappeared crew members, and harangues him for trying to blow his wages at the pub rather than come home to his family. Nick finds his wife and child gone and home unoccupied, while his neighbors embrace him as their son Luke, the ill-fated Rose worker who missed his shift. Jenkin fills Rose of Nevada with ominous foreshadowing before the film’s premise reveals itself. Before he leaves, the unwell Mrs. Richards (Mary Woodvine) speaks to Nick like she’s mistaking him for her son (or damning him to take his place). Alan’s old, red hat, recovered from the reappeared boat, organically finds its way to Liam’s head before he embarks, earning a knowing smile from Tina. Such details continue to pile up, until you’re burning to understand what exactly is happening here.

Callum Turner and George MacKay in raincoats looking stunned in Rose of Nevada

The movie doesn’t tell us everything, nor does it really need to. In most cases, the ambiguity works in its favor, creating the spooky feeling we get anytime we brush up against something we can’t quite explain. But Jenkin doesn’t leave us completely in the dark, either. Rose of Nevada is genuinely invested in the plights of the two young men, and Nick especially is determined to figure out not only what is happening to him, but how to get back to his life. The point of the film, however, is not to see him get to the bottom of this mystery. Instead, it’s to see what he will decide to do with the information he gets. There is some wonderful complexity to be found there, and MacKay and Turner, both rising stars who can still slot back into this particular, blue-collar world, prove perfect avatars for it. Jenkin is interested in community, identity, causality, the passage of time, and the true significance of duty and sacrifice, all of which are allowed to swirl and grow within this atmosphere he’s created. No frame, sound, or filmic element is wasted. And it ends in a place that is genuinely fascinating.

Rose of Nevada surely won’t be for everyone, but it’s the kind of film worth taking the chance to discover firsthand whether it is for you. In any case, you can at least be certain you won’t come away from the experience empty-handed. Rose of Nevada releases in limited theaters on Friday, June 19.

Release Date

June 19, 2026

Runtime

114 minutes

Director

Mark Jenkin

Writers

Mark Jenkin

Producers

Denzil Monk