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In “The Quarry,” a preacher by the name of David Martin (Shea Whigam) arrives in the small and economically devastated West Texas town of Bevel to become the latest person to head up its sole and sparsely attended church. His arrival is not auspicious—the night he arrives, his van is broken into and everything he has is stolen—and when he finds out that, with one exception, no one in his Spanish-speaking congregation understands English, it seems as if he will not be long in his position. However, his plain and unadorned manner winds up striking a chord with the parishioners—“He speaks without judgement,” according to one—and their numbers slowly begin to grow. Even Celia (Catalina Sandino Mareno), the woman who has been renting a room out in her house to a recent parade of temporary ministers, is impressed, even if he seems like no other preacher she's known.

Boy, is she right. What she and the other townspeople do not know is that the man they know as David Martin is actually a nameless drifter who was picked up on the side of the road by the real David Martin ( Bruno Bichir ) while driving down to take up that minister position. Although the real David has his share of personal demons—alcoholism among them—he is trying to find some kind of inner peace. In the man that he has picked up, he intuits a similarly tortured soul that he genuinely wants to help. Alas, the man does not respond to his ministrations very well and winds up killing the guy during a pit stop at a remote quarry. After haphazardly burying the body, the man decides to assume David’s identity and head to Bevel himself. When his van is broken into, that attracts the attentions of police chief Moore ( Michael Shannon ), who thinks that there is something slightly odd about this newcomer. However, Moore quickly discovers that the thieves were drug dealer Valentin ( Bobby Soto ) and his young brother Poco (Alvaro Martinez). When the real David’s body is discovered, he has enough circumstantial evidence to pin that crime on them as well, though the brothers have a pretty good idea of whom the actual killer might be.

Based on a 1995 novel by Damon Galgut , which was set in South Africa and dealt in part with racial tensions in the wake of the ending of apartheid, “The Quarry” sounds as if it has all the elements to be a dark and brooding western-tinged noir drama in the mold of “ No Country for Old Men .” The trouble is that while director/co-writer Scott Teems has the ingredients, he doesn’t seem to have much of any idea of how to put them together in a compelling manner. He employs a deliberately slow and measured approach that works for a little while, but soon becomes plodding before fizzling out entirely at precisely the moment when things should start heating up from a dramatic standpoint. As for the screenplay, it too often feels like a collection of contrivances than anything else—we never buy the idea that the drifter would voluntarily elect to assume the life of the man he killed, and the developments that inadvertently tie the two brothers to the murder are pretty dubious. On top of that, the notion that the drifter can somehow win hearts as a preacher despite having no familiarity with the Bible (and a congregation that doesn’t understand what he is saying to them) sounds promising from a satirical standpoint, but winds up coming across as inertly as everything else. Whigham and Moreno are both good actors but they cannot do much with what they have been given to work with—he is stymied by a character that is frustratingly opaque without ever being compelling, while she has little to do other than lie around and contemplate her own regrets in life while smoking cigarettes.

What ultimately makes “The Quarry” so frustrating is that there are some good things in it that could have been developed into a more compelling film. The basic premise of the story is not without interest and could have served as the basis of an intriguing and gripping noir narrative. Likewise, the finale of the film is fairly strong, if somewhat implausible from a logistical standpoint, even though it will strike many as being too little and way too late to have any real impact. Best of all, it has the latest striking performance from Michael Shannon as the police chief. Granted, Shannon is one of those live-wire performers who can’t help but goose up any film he is in the minute he steps into a scene, and that is certainly the case here. In a story where every other element has been rendered as dry, flat and affectless as the area in which it has been set, he manages to create a character who feels like an authentic person with a life outside of the parameters of the plot. “The Quarry” may be a slow burn from a dramatic standpoint but it is only when Shannon is around that it flickers, however briefly, to life.

Available on VOD today, 4/17.

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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The Quarry (2020)

Rated R for some violence and language.

Shea Whigham as The Man

Michael Shannon as Chief Moore

Catalina Sandino Moreno as Celia

Bobby Soto as Valentin

Scott Teems

Writer (novel)

Damon Galgut
Andrew Brotzman

Cinematographer

Michael Alden Lloyd
Saira Haider
Heather McIntosh

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The Quarry Reviews

With this film many of the best moments are spent watching and absorbing two wily pros like Shannon and Whigham work out a scene.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 24, 2022

The Quarry's exploration of fascinating moral ambiguity is carried by stellar performances from Whigham and Shannon.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Oct 21, 2020

The Quarry does enough to pass as an absorbing, if slightly under-stuffed drama of the evil that men do.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 10, 2020

The film's weighty spiritual inquiries may suggest we're on a narrative arc toward a heart-warming redemption. But Teems and Brotzman are braver storytellers than that.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 20, 2020

A lot of wasted potential, despite being well acted, but underneath is buried an important, timely interrogation of American whiteness and morality.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 5, 2020

Writer/Director Scott Teems' sophomore narrative feature shows great promise.

Full Review | Apr 28, 2020

"The Quarry" is a slow-burn Western noir built around terrific but understated performances by Michael Shannon and Shea Whigham.

/q slow, simmering tale that has glorious performances and rewards, even in its noticeable shortcomings.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 28, 2020

It is Michael Shannon vs Shea Whigham in slow burning Texas noir that rocks a small town and results in a satisfying and riveting indie with flavor and superb acting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 22, 2020

A slow burn, but entertaining and diverting.

Full Review | Apr 20, 2020

This is usually the kind of movie that I want to soak into. I like these small-town noirs and anything with Michael Shannon usually gets a thousand bonus points from me, but this film was more just OK.

In short, The Quarry feels demeaning towards its Mexican American community at every turn as the script never handles the transitions with which we feel they would so unquestionably embrace Whigham but distrust Shannon.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 20, 2020

There is murder, subtle lust and broken souls at its core, all captured vividly with a pace that avoids bombastic clichés.

There are just two key ingredients, and they're not enough to make a meal.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 20, 2020

One note portrayals, skin deep characters, and a glacial pace all combine to prevent The Quarry from succeeding either as a slow-burn thriller or a message-oriented drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 19, 2020

There is something affecting about "The Quarry," even if it doesn't quite fully sustain its spare worldview, and despite the storytelling becoming increasingly cluttered by the end.

Full Review | Apr 18, 2020

Both actors feel like they are rising above the somewhat underwritten material, and sometimes that's enough to enjoy what you're watching.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 18, 2020

Even when the script lets them down by making things incredibly obvious, Michael Shannon and Shea Whigham find compelling notes to play.

"The Quarry" is so diagrammed that it uses its undernourished dark-side-of-the-heartland atmosphere to excuse the fact that nothing of note is really taking place.

There's a great premise here, but ya have to execute...

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 17, 2020

Screen Rant

The quarry review: michael shannon carries southern suspense thriller.

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The SXSW Film Festival is usually home to a variety of exciting new films. Their selections ooze with originality and the festival encourages filmmakers to bring forth their most creative and inspired projects to put on display. It's a festival that prides itself on its immensely entertaining slate that relishes in a variety of genres. Unfortunately, due to the unpredictability of COVID-19 and how quickly the virus has spread, SXSW was officially canceled this year for the first time in its 34-year history. As heartbreaking as this was, many individuals still strived to get their highly-anticipated features seen. Scott Teems' latest film was among those in search of viewers and a place to eventually call home after the chaotic closure of the festival. Although The Quarry feels lackluster in its execution, it's an intriguing story of redemption that's largely carried by a captivating Michael Shannon.

Based on the novel by Damon Galgut, The Quarry centers on a drifter (Shea Whigham), who is only ever known to viewers as The Man. Not much is known about The Man, only that his past is littered with some very dark secrets and he's seemingly on the run from something . While en route to a small Texas town to start a new job at the local church, a preacher by the name of David Martín (Bruno Bichir) offers The Man a ride after discovering him passed out on the side of the road. Martín also appears to have a checkered past, as evidenced by the numerous bottles of liquor he's chugging while driving. The two don't necessarily click, and after stopping at a rest stop, the preacher's good intentions -- stemming from a want to grant The Man forgiveness for what occupies his mind -- take a terrifying turn when The Man's disagreements with Martín lean into violent aggression, killing the helpless preacher in the process.

Related: South By SouthWest Cancelled: 10 Films That Are Worth The Wait

Horrified by what just occurred, The Man buries Martín in a nearby quarry, hoping that he'll be forgotten about and he can move on with the rest of his life. In the process, The Man then takes Martín's car and makes his way into the town nearby, posing as the preacher to avoid confrontation. However, not everyone is sold on this mysterious new preacher and his wise sermons centered on sin and forgiveness. A local sheriff named Chief Moore (Michael Shannon) has his own suspicions about this new arrival, and his misgivings start to heighten once Martín's body is discovered in the quarry. Although Martín is a stranger to everyone in this small town, The Man is certainly aware of who he is and what happened, causing tensions to rise once the Chief comes looking for answers.

The premise of this film boasts so much thrilling potential, but often, it feels as if Teems is holding back from unleashing its full power. The Quarry is very much a slow-burn, but rather than leaning into an explosive finale, it fizzles towards the finish line. Although there are a variety of aspects to the film that tout intriguing character and story development, these avenues are rarely explored to their greatest potential. It's difficult to find a way to connect with The Man, let alone feel interested in his narrative arc. He's not alone in this, either. A handful of other characters also don't feel like they serve much of a purpose in the overall story. In particular, Catalina Sandino Moreno, who plays a young woman named Celia, often just feels like a sounding board for the two male leads to bounce their ideas off of. Her character's lack of substance feels, unfortunately, unnecessary to the film's main storyline, which already feels uneven as is.

However, there are a select few standouts who breathe thrilling, and often much-needed, life into the story. Shannon's Chief Moore, especially, musters up enough energy to make it a worthwhile experience. His character is interesting, lived-in with the small-town environment around him, and unapologetically authentic. The film would have easily benefited from leaning more into Moore and his investigation into the mysterious Man. Even Bobby Soto deliveres a strong performance as a wrongly-convicted Mexican man named Valentin -- another character who offered up the possibility of an exciting narrative exploration into race relations in small-town America. Unfortunately, it's another storytelling point that Teems caps off all-too-soon.

Throughout the film, it often feels as if Teems wanted to cover an abundance of territory all at once, which eventually just led to a lackluster finish. In the end, The Quarry is a story that boasts so much potential but never truly reaches for the greatest possible height that it very well could. A strong narrative bogged down by slow pacing and mundane execution makes for an all-around fine feature, but nothing spectacular. Thankfully, Shannon's performance provides enough energy and enthusiasm to keep viewers invested up until the end, showing a different side to the narrative that, if favored, could have benefitted The Quarry in the long run. It's clear that Teems had a grand vision in mind, but the end result doesn't quite hit that mark.

Next: Read Screen Rant's Trolls World Tour Review

The Quarry is now available on-demand and digitally. It is 98 minutes long and rated R for some violence and language.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Great performances make violent crime story worth seeing.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Offers a few somewhat vague messages about discrim

No role models here, although the most violent cha

Guns and shooting. Stabbing. Brutal punching. Char

A couple has a sexual relationship; they're seen i

Uses of "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," "bastard," "hel

Secondary characters are drug dealers. Bag of pot

Positive Messages

Offers a few somewhat vague messages about discrimination (shown to be ugly) and forgiveness (shown to be enlightening), although these are secondary to movie's main story.

Positive Role Models

No role models here, although the most violent characters do end up facing consequences for their actions.

Violence & Scariness

Guns and shooting. Stabbing. Brutal punching. Character killed. Body buried. Gory, decomposing corpse shown. Blood shown, bloody wounds. Broken glass stuck in hand. House on fire. Nightmare sequences: Person in coffin buried alive. Descriptions of violent incidents.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A couple has a sexual relationship; they're seen in the bedroom together -- nothing explicit shown. Sex-related dialogue (a character describes an affair).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Uses of "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," "bastard," "hell," "damn," and "d--k," plus exclamatory uses of "Jesus" and "God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Secondary characters are drug dealers. Bag of pot shown. A secondary character seems to be an alcoholic; he drinks wine while driving, keeps crate full of wine bottles behind driver's seat. Character smokes cigarettes. Wine with dinner.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Quarry is a crime drama about a man who kills and then impersonates a priest and tries not to get caught. Violence is the biggest issue: There are guns and shooting, fatal punching, deaths and dead bodies (as well as a gory decomposed corpse), blood/minor gore, nightmare sequences of a person buried alive and trapped in a coffin, and more. Language includes "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," etc. Secondary characters are drug dealers, and pot is shown. Another secondary character appears to be an alcoholic, drinking bottles of wine while driving. A character smokes. A couple appears to be having a sexual affair, and there's some sex-related talk. The movie is a little slow, but its two fine performances (by Shea Whigham and Michael Shannon ) spark some fascinating moments, and it's worth seeing for mature viewers. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

In THE QUARRY, a preacher ( Bruno Bichir ) drives through Texas and comes upon an unconscious man ( Shea Whigham ) by the side of the road. At a quarry, the priest provokes him, and the man punches the preacher, killing him. The man then buries the body and assumes the preacher's identity. Now "David Martin," he drives on to a small town, where Celia ( Catalina Sandino Moreno ) waits for him with a room. During the night, the van is robbed. Police chief Moore ( Michael Shannon ) takes the report but seems suspicious. David starts giving sermons -- unexpectedly, he's a success, and more people begin attending. Meanwhile, the thieves have traced David's whereabouts back to the quarry.

Is It Any Good?

A dusty, rural crime story, this slow-paced drama doesn't dig very deep, but the sun-baked, wind-blown setting and the nuanced performances by the two gifted lead actors make it well worth a look. Based on a novel by South African writer Damon Galgut (which was already made into a movie in that country in 1998), The Quarry has a few problems of translation -- a few small details that don't quite fit the Texas backdrop. And it provides very little to do for Moreno (which is too bad, considering that she was unforgettable in Maria Full of Grace ).

In broad strokes, The Quarry takes on prejudice and anti-immigrant attitudes, but it doesn't go very far, especially given that one of its major immigrant characters is actually a drug dealer and that Whigham's White character can't speak Spanish. But the movie sparks to life when Whigham and Shannon play cat-and-mouse with each other. And Whigham's scenes in the church as he reads words of forgiveness are quite moving. Both stars are character actors of the highest caliber -- they've worked together many times before, in films like Boardwalk Empire -- and their work here is more than enough to make the movie worth a look.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Quarry 's violence . How strong is it? How did it make you feel? Are there consequences for violence? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

How are alcohol, drugs, and smoking depicted? Are these things glamorized? Are there consequences? Why is that important?

What does the movie have to say about forgiveness? What does The Man learn about himself and about others while giving his sermons? Who deserves to be forgiven?

How are other cultures depicted in The Quarry ? Is there discrimination based on race or culture? Are there stereotypes ?

How does the movie compare to the Damon Galgut book it's based on? To the earlier 1998 movie?

Movie Details

On DVD or streaming : June 16, 2020
Cast : Shea Whigham , Michael Shannon , Catalina Sandino Moreno
Director : Scott Teems
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Latino actors
Studio : Lionsgate
Genre : Thriller
Run time : 98 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : some violence and language
Last updated : November 29, 2023

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DVD & Streaming

Content Caution

In Theaters

Shea Whigham as The Man; Michael Shannon as Chief Moore; Catalina Sandino Moreno as Celia; Bobby Soto as Valentin; Bruno Bichir as David Martín; Alvaro Martinez as Poco

Home Release Date

April 17, 2020
Scott Teems

Distributor

Movie review.

He drives into Bevel, Texas, late one night—a disheveled man in a disheveled van. A boy, about 12, sees him.

“You lost?” the boy says.

“I’m looking for the church,” the man says, and the boy points the way. When the man arrives, a woman in a pink robe steps out of the house next door.

The man introduces himself as David Martin. He’s the town’s new preacher, he says.

The woman—Celia—welcomes him without a smile and shows him where he’ll be staying; a small, sparsely furnished room with a twin bed and tiny bathroom adjacent. She advises him to bring his stuff inside. “It’s not safe here at night,” he says.

He lies down on the bed and shuts his eyes. “I just want to sleep,” he says.

The next morning, the van’s wheels are gone, and its windows are broken. All the boxes and bags in back—the files, the pictures, the empty wine bottles—are gone. Someone’s taken everything that David Martin owns.

Or, we should say, stole himself .

But the real David Martin—the reverend buried in an all-too-shallow hole in a nearby quarry—doesn’t need it anymore.

Positive Elements

Let’s backtrack a bit and see how these two David Martins—the real one and the one who stole his identity—met.

The real David Martin was indeed a man of God, driving to a new job in the middle of nowhere. Along the way, he spied a man lying by the side of the road. Martin picked him up, drove him to a café and bought him some food. And when the stranger devoured his breakfast as if he’d not eaten for weeks, Martin pushed his own bowl of food over to the stranger so he could eat that, too.

“God is funny,” the Latino pastor mutters to himself in Spanish, “to bring you to me.”

This act of kindness doesn’t culminate in a happy ending for the reverend, and it presages one of the movie’s biggest themes: what might’ve been.

Still, when the man now claiming to be David arrives in Bevel, his presence serves as a strange catalyst for positive change. And throughout, we see how people in this tiny, dysfunctional town care for their loved ones, albeit often imperfectly.

Spiritual Elements

“I am a religious man,” the real David Martin tells the stranger. A cross hangs from his rearview mirror. He has a certificate in the back of his van that proves he’s a pastor. While he has veered from the path of righteousness (as we’ll get to later), David still believes in God and His power to heal. And when he pulls off into the quarry for a bit, he tells the stranger that the man should confess his sins.

“There’s power in confession,” the reverend says.

“I don’t believe in your religion,” the stranger tells him.

“Religion has nothing to do with it,” David says, but continues to insist that it’s the first step toward redemption and salvation, that whatever he’s done can be wiped clean. “I want you to give yourself to God,” he adds. That leads to a confrontation that culminates in David’s death.

When the stranger subsequently arrives at the church, he knows nothing about his new vocation, so he starts reading the dead man’s Bible—beginning with 1 Timothy. He has no theological or even religious background to add to the text, so he simply reads its first chapter to his sparse flock—allowing the sole English-speaking congregant to translate to the rest of the faithful.

“Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners, of which I am chief,” the stranger says. He reads Paul’s words about being a “blasphemer, and a persecutor and a violent man,” feeling the weight of the words upon him.

And so the stranger’s pastorship begins. He reads from the Bible and adds little. He carries himself with unsmiling, deep humility, acutely aware that he is a chief sinner. People begin to notice that he’s different from most ministers they’ve met. “I’ve known a few preachers in my day,” Celia says. “You’re not like any of them.” And as he preaches—without condemnation, some remark—his flock steadily grows. Someone even stands up in church and confesses that she is “dirt” and feels like she’s beyond saving, but later asks the stranger to baptize her. And, in a lovely riverside ceremony, he does.

The Quarry is, at its heart, a deeply religious story: We see spiritual vestments and spend a lot of time inside a tiny church (one that doubles as the locale for a circuit court, too). People talk about religious matters quite a bit. People sing hymns, sometimes to themselves. We hear lots and lots of biblical passages (most of which come with a double meaning, and a few interpretations that might be controversial).

Celia smokes a cigarette with one hand while holding a Rosary with the other. The local police chief, noting that the stranger doesn’t smile much, suggests he watch some TV preachers to “get some tips.” When the stranger is asked to pray, he begins reciting the Lord’s Prayer, but doesn’t know the words after “our Father.” After a pause, though, the congregation takes over, assuming that their own reverend father wanted them to lead the prayer themselves. Hypocrisy is a big theme, too—aspects of which we’ll flesh out a bit below.

But the story again and again comes to the movie’s central theological thrust: the importance of confession and forgiveness. And we see the stranger’s own need to confess grow as the movie runs. Turns out, the real David Martin was right: There is power in confession, even if the results of that confession—in the context of the movie—are mixed.

Sexual Content

David Martin makes a confession of his own to the stranger. “I loved a woman and she loved me,” he says. But the woman had a husband and children, and “I am a religious man.” It’s suggested that this might’ve been the main reason he left (or was forced to leave) his previous congregation.

But sexual immorality, the movie suggests, is nothing new for the kind of preachers that this small Texas town is used to. When the stranger walks into Celia’s room late one night, she mutters that he might be “like all the others” after all. (He just came in, though, to ask what hymn Celia was singing to herself.) And when the stranger first reports that his stuff was stolen and the police chief asks him if he was with anyone during the night, the stranger is taken aback, given that he’s a “pastor” and all.

“I don’t care who you sleep with, Reverend,” the chief says. “I’m asking if you’re traveling alone.”

The police chief is sleeping with someone, though: Celia. The stranger hears them in bed together, and we see the two in the same bedroom afterward: The chief is pulling on his clothes while Celia lies in the bed, apparently naked, asking him to stay the night for once. He tells her not to “beg,” and an angry Celia pulls on her robe. (We see her bare back and brief, shadowed hints of other parts of her body.)

The chief tells a dirty joke involving oral sex and circumcision.

[ Spoiler Warning ] We don’t know what the stranger is running from until the very end of the film, but it turns out that he discovered his wife and her lover together and, in a heat of passion, killed them both.

Violent Content

David Martin’s murder (which is replayed once during the movie) takes place some distance from the camera: The stranger hits him over the head with a wine bottle and David falls out of sight. We hear what might be the man’s last gurgle, but the next we see of him is his lifeless corpse (with a bloody wound on its head). As the stranger drags the body to a place to bury it, he gets a jagged piece of glass jammed in his palm, which he graphically and painfully pulls out. He bandages the wound with a piece of the dead man’s shirt, and the wound lingers throughout the film—perhaps meant to serve as a quiet echo of Christ’s own pierced palm, or perhaps the deeply wounding nature of sin.

We later see the half-unburied corpse, and it looks really, grotesquely bad. The chief describes in detail what bits the animals have eaten away. The stranger sometimes sees David in dreams or visions, looking like himself but with the bloody wound still on display.

Another man is arrested for David’s murder, and two deputies climb into a cell with the guy to extract a confession. The next time we see the accused man, he sports a number of bruises and abrasions to his face. The man’s 12-year-old brother also suffers a bloody injury to his head at the hands of the police.

The stranger has some pretty messed up dreams, including one of him being trapped in what looks to be a coffin and a burning building. He later rips down a wanted poster that’s apparently for him: The poster tells us that he’s wanted for murder and felony arson.

Two men are stabbed, one to death. A gunshot wound may also lead to a lingering demise. We learn that someone was killed in a traffic accident.

Crude or Profane Language

Nine f-words and about six s-words. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n” and “h—.” Jesus’ name is abused twice.

Drug and Alcohol Content

David Martin drinks wine straight from the bottle as he drives. (He’s already emptied a few.) When he pulls into the quarry, it’s so he can “dry out,” and his insistence that the stranger confess his sins is made under the influence of alcohol. For his part, David confesses to the stranger that he’s an alcoholic, to which the stranger tells him that’s hardly a secret.

The stranger rejects the wine, but the man who steals the stuff out of the back of the van drinks some of it later.

The thief, a man named Valentin, uses the quarry for his own purposes: to grow marijuana. He’s a known drug dealer, and he his little brother Paco, tend to the crop in the middle of the night. And when it looks as if the police might be on to his crop, Paco goes to the quarry and pulls up the illegal plants.

Celia and the police chief both drink alcohol (with the chief shooting empty beer cans), and Celia smokes cigarettes, as well.

Other Negative Elements

The chief urinates in a bathroom (we see only the top half of him). The stranger doesn’t explicitly lie much, but he spends the entire film misleading most everyone. And when he does lie, it tends to be a mighty big one.

The chief is suspected by many of being a racist, and much of what he says might confirm it.

When the stranger stands up at the front of that tiny church, dressed in another man’s vestments and preaching out of another man’s Bible, he knows that the people who stare at him from the room are looking for wisdom. Comfort. Truth.

He has no wisdom, no comfort to give. But he has, against all odds, stumbled onto a bit of truth.

“It’s not me that you are here for,” he says. “It’s the words. It’s the book. I don’t know what I say.”

The Quarry is rated R, and as such it has some obvious problems—especially when it comes to the film’s sometimes raw language. Like the stranger at the movie’s core, this story isn’t spotless.

And yet there’s truth here, and it’s that the truth itself—and confessing that truth—can indeed set people free.

That freedom comes with caveats. This is no standard Christian film with a happily ever after ending for everybody involved. The movie embraces the sorts of paradoxes that have been a part of the faith since its inception: In our weakness we are strong. The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of man. It’s possible to live and yet be dead. And sometimes we find a different sort of life in the midst of death and suffering.

The police chief tells us that “forgiveness only works in a world where people learn their lessons. But they don’t. Not here, anyway.” And indeed, not everyone learns their own lessons until the very end—perhaps when it’s too late—if they learn them at all. But the lessons themselves still have power and resonance. Even if the movie’s characters are resistant to them, the viewers need not be.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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The biggest issue with Scott Teems ' new drama The Quarry is that the story feels truncated. Sometimes knowing a story will be resolved adds dramatic stakes and the storyteller only has a limited time to payoff the narrative. But in the case of The Quarry , it feels like Teems is at a starting point with an obvious conclusion rather than the start of a bigger narrative that better accommodates the themes he wishes to explore. Instead, The Quarry feels like a simple morality play about the impossibility of building penance on top of sin. The performances from lead actors Shea Whigham , Michael Shannon , and Catalina Sandino Moreno are all terrific, but frequently it feels like we're just skimming the surface of a much deeper story.

Traveling preacher David Martin ( Bruno Bichir ) finds a drifter (Whigham) passed out on the side of the road. Martin tends to the man, gives him food and water, and then tries to save his soul. For his trouble, the drifter beats Martin to death, buries his body in a quarry, and steals his identity. The drifter arrives in the town masquerading as the preacher, and since no one has seen David Martin before in this small, primarily immigrant community, they accept that the preacher is who he says he is. The drifter tries to lay low, but starts forging connections with people in the community like his host Celia (Moreno) and the local police chief, Moore (Shannon). However, the drifter's crime begins to weigh on him as a local tough, Valentin ( Bobby Soto ), is suspected for Martin's murder.

Watching The Quarry , I wanted the story to extend beyond the confines of a film, which is rare, because I usually find prestige TV shows too long and drawn out. But the character questions that Teems poses with this premise are intriguing and lend themselves well to long-form explorations on the nature of penance, repentance, and sin. But within the confines of a feature film, The Quarry simply becomes an editorial about these topics. The dramatic tension of the film wants to be whether or not the drifter will be discovered, but the richness of the movie comes from his emerging conscience and his connection with the community. These are relationships and ideas that deserve further exploration than what they receive here, which is largely composed of the drifter feeling guilty and furtive over his actions.

There's also a subtext here of how Americans treat Mexican immigrants. The drifter ministers to a congregation comprised largely of Mexican immigrants who don't even speak English (a member of the congregation translates for him), but he's also willing to let another Mexican resident take the fall for his crime. The film shows that it's easy to read from the Bible and take the nice lessons from it, but when it comes to being tested by those lessons, the good book may not be enough if the sinner hasn't fully reckoned with his sin. Unfortunately, the characters are so thinly drawn that the drifter is more of an archetype than a person despite Whigham's soulful performance.

I like the ideas that The Quarry offers, but I wanted more of them. These characters are good starting points, but without time to really flesh them out or delve into their conflicts, they function more like waypoints for certain ideas. Moore exists to talk about the shortcomings of forgiveness, but there's not much to his personality beyond his affair with Celia. The Drifter is a man with a past, but is he a rotten guy, or is there more nuance there? Is he a person or merely a symbol for the ideas that Teems and co-writer Andrew Brotzman wish to convey? The Quarry could have been a much deeper story in the right medium, but as a film, it's a shallow plot.

The Quarry is available on VOD on April 17th.

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Movie Review – The Quarry (2020)

April 17, 2020 by Robert Kojder

The Quarry , 2020.

Directed by Scott Teems. Starring Shea Whigham, Michael Shannon, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Bobby Soto, Alvaro Martinez, and Bruno Bichir.

A drifter (Shea Whigham) kills a traveling preacher and takes his place at a small-town church, but the police chief (Michael Shannon) suspects foul play.

The Quarry starts off as a psychological journey into the mind of a sinner stealing the identity of a pastor and then hightailing away to go preaching to a small West Texas town, before not so subtly transitioning into a story of modern-day racial politics. Unfortunately, for director Scott Teems (this is his second narrative feature and he also serves as one of the co-writers) neither approach is handled well, employed with a slow burn and admittedly atmospheric music from Heather McIntosh, fluffing up a rather pointless exercise.

The opening sequence is promising, beginning with a 15-minute introductory series of events (the title card doesn’t even come up until this is over) of pastor David Martin (Bruno Bichir) having conversations with Shea Whigham’s nameless mess of a human being (his character is credited simply as The Man) being suspected for some kind of foul play. Following a drive to the titular quarry, an altercation occurs setting The Man down the path of assuming the identity of David Martin, delivering passages from the Bible to a town mostly made up of minorities.

The exception here is Chief Moore (a dry Michael Shannon somehow sucked of the seemingly bottomless charisma he usually possesses) who is either one of the dumbest detectives ever put to screen or secretly in on The Man’s identity theft, using unorthodox methods to further torture him mentally. The only issue with those actions (aside from not being concerned with true justice) would be he’s only taking it out on a local drug dealer whom he expresses conviction for being the real perpetrator. The script doesn’t make any of this a secret, and that’s because if it did, even someone that doesn’t even watch movies would have been able to figure it out. So either Chief Moore is playing psychological games of his own, is a racist (at one point he does fail miserably trying to hide his prejudices), or is straight-up incompetent as his job. Neither of these outcomes makes for anything intriguing under such flat storytelling.

By far, the bigger issue is that there is also not much to the character of The Man or any of the citizens he interacts with. He rents a room from a woman that Chief Moore conveniently happens to be dating (and that’s only the first of many amateurish conveniences on display here), his sermons and interactions with those attending don’t resonate in any meaningful way (they set up something with the English- Spanish language barrier that ends up not mattering), and his ability to get away with maintaining his false identity comes so easy (and also at the expense of more stupidity from Moore) that it’s comical.

There are still some passable aspects here, namely the body language from various actors and a few heated dialogue exchanges between The Man and Valentin (Bobby Soto), the minority he ends up framing for a laundry list of crimes. In some ways, I was actually glad The Quarry shifted gears to something much more racially charged considering the pastor impersonation storyline has recently been done near perfectly in last year’s Polish film Corpus Christi (it was also nominated for Best International Film at the Academy Awards), but that also fizzled out fast. Not even the presence of Michael Shannon can salvage this one. Perhaps it needed another writer on board to properly flesh out whatever story Scott Teems wanted to tell.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, friend me on Facebook, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd , check out my personal non-Flickering Myth affiliated Patreon , or email me at [email protected]

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Movie Review: The Quarry (2020)

Dominique Meyer
Movie Reviews
--> April 17, 2020

Author Victor Hugo was once quoted as saying, “There are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.” The idea that unjust law and prejudice infect communities for generations only to create more monsters along the way is still prevalent today, especially in media. In his third directorial effort, writer/director Scott Teems brings us The Quarry , a film that seeks to explore one such permeated community and its citizens’ journeys to find absolution, but never really offers a dense perspective or a substantial resolution.

The film begins with a nameless wanderer, known as The Man (Shea Whigham, “ Joker ”) roaming the empty rural highways of Texas. He is kindly picked up by a Catholic minister David Martin (Bruno Bichir, “ Sicario: Day of the Soldado ”). Along the way, David begins to suspect the wanderer may be a fugitive, resulting in an altercation that leaves David in a shallow grave and The Man with all his belongings. Seeking refuge, The Man assumes the minister’s identity in a modest Texas town, but it’s not too long before his past begins to catch up with him.

Although never fully expounded upon, Teems teases a history of judgment and pain in the fictional town of Bevel, Texas. As The Man begins his preaching, he is met with the challenge of connecting with a predominately Mexican congregation, most of whom do not even speak English. Through his attempts to engage, however, he discovers an absence of faith in the town, particularly through Celia (Catalina Sandino Moreno, “ A Most Violent Year ”), a woman who has misgivings about her own past and how it has affected her family in the present.

Coming to terms with his own decisions, The Man begins to strengthen the faith in the community through his sermons about sin and forgiveness, much to the surprise of Moore (Michael Shannon, “ Knives Out ”), the town’s white police chief. Like The Man, Moore is propelled by a sense of duty under questionable circumstances. He’s a complicated contradiction; neither cruel nor kind. He expresses a sense of vulnerable care towards Celia — whom he is sleeping with — yet exhibits an accusatory attitude towards her cousin Valentin (Bobby Soto, “A Better Life”), a known drug dealer. When Valentin robs David’s van, he becomes the prime suspect of Moore’s growing suspicions that something sinister is afoot in his quiet town, which only become more targeted after the minister’s body is uncovered in the titular quarry.

While each character is burdened with resentment of their past, not a lot is known about any one of them to make their journeys particularly compelling. The Man bears a wound on his palm early in the film, obviously emblematic of Christ’s crucifixion, signaling his remorse and willingness to find redemption through faith. Yet, the details of his crimes are under-explained in a reveal that comes way too late to bear much significance. Valentin is irrefutably a criminal — innocent in this case — but while Moore’s persistent allegations against him are not completely unreasonable given the lack of evidence presented, a preconceived bias exists within him that he refuses to confront. And while it’s always a pleasure to see Moreno in a film, her character mostly exists to give context to the male leads around her.

Teems weaves a tapestry of muddled ethics that is mostly carried by the capable performances of his A-List cast — and makes for a few suitably engaging interactions between Whigham and Shannon in particular — but there are otherwise too few thrills or surprises to be found in the slow-burn yarn that unfolds.

The Quarry asks many questions. What is the cost of forgiveness? Do bad people deserve redemption? Where is the line between truth and lies in one’s duty to law or faith? As lived-in as Teems makes the town of Bevel, there’s a grander story to be told from these questions that never materializes, and it ultimately results in a humdrum analysis of race and faith with no clear hypothesis.

Tagged: church , cop , murder , novel adaptation , redemption , Texas

An unabashed lover of all things film, Dominique Meyer is also an aspiring actor and Uber driver based in Dallas, TX. His hobbies include watching movies, breathing movies, living for movies, and consuming gratuitous amounts of cheese.

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A stranger drifts into a small town in west Texas, taking up a position as the preacher at a rundown local church. The local lawman treats him with skeptical respect, but soon secrets from the preacher’s past catch up with him, leading to a showdown. It could be the plot from any number of vintage Westerns, and director Scott Teems draws on that history for his adaptation of Damon Galgut’s 1995 novel The Quarry . Galgut’s novel was set in South Africa (as was a previous film adaptation in 1998), but Teems moves the action to the American southwest, investing the movie with a strong sense of place even if the plot remains wispy and inscrutable.

The main character, played by Shea Whigham, doesn’t even get a name (he’s listed in the closing credits as "the man"). He’s discovered passed out on the side of a desolate highway, where a kindly stranger (Bruno Bichir) picks him up and takes him to a roadside diner to eat and drink and regain his strength. The stranger is a minister headed to the tiny town of Bevel, Texas, where he’s set to take over the local church, and he implores the man to come with him, to confess the sins he’s running from and start a new life, as the minister himself is doing.

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Instead, the man gets angry and kills the minister in a fit of rage, burying him in a shallow grave at the quarry that gives the movie its title. He finds papers identifying the minister as David Martin, and he drives into Bevel under that new identity, passing himself off as the town’s new preacher. Never mind that he’s probably never been inside a church in his life, or that the community mostly made up of Mexican immigrants was expecting a minister who speaks Spanish. He reaches his small congregation by reading directly from the Bible, his words translated by the only congregant who speaks English, and soon the small church is completely filled.

The Quarry (whose title refers both to the physical location and the man’s status as a fugitive) isn’t really about a criminal posing as a minister, though. The story has a dreamlike quality that attempts to make up for its lack of believability, especially in the man’s efforts to become a credible religious leader, but it’s not as abstract as Galgut’s novel. Teems and co-writer Andrew Brotzman try to balance the surreal touches (including a heavy, droning score and dream sequences of the man buried alive) with modern social commentary about life in a Texas border town, but it’s an awkward fit.

The man’s counterpart in Bevel is Chief Moore (Michael Shannon), the head of the local police force and the only other white face we ever see in town. Moore first welcomes the new reverend, helping him file a complaint about a pair of local hoodlums who broke into his van and stripped its tires, but he soon grows suspicious, even as he rounds up the criminal brothers responsible for the theft. Like the man, Moore is a Western archetype, the one bastion of law and order in a town neglected by larger government entities. And while he’s sleeping with Mexican immigrant Celia (Catalina Sandino Moreno), the church’s administrator, he isn’t immune from crude prejudices about the Mexican immigrants (some documented, some not) who fill the town.

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"You’re not a big smiler, are you?" Moore says to the man at one point, and The Quarry is mostly grim and plodding, not nearly as profound in its meditations on guilt and forgiveness as the filmmakers seem to think it is. As local small-time crook Valentin (Bobby Soto) and his kid brother Poco (Alvaro Martinez) are heavily targeted for the man’s own crimes, he’s consumed with regret, but not enough to come forward and confess. The racial dynamic that puts two Mexicans behind bars for a white man’s crime is one of the movie’s central themes, and yet it remains under-explored as Teems instead focuses on the stand-off between the man and Moore.

Whigham is a reliable character actor who often plays taciturn tough guys who are frustrated by their lack of power, and The Quarry gives him a long-overdue chance at a lead role. But the man is so closed off that Whigham has very little to work with, and his former Boardwalk Empire co-star Shannon steals the spotlight whenever he’s onscreen, just because Moore is more sly and outgoing. Neither character really progresses beyond his basic Western-genre archetype, leading to a symbolic but unsatisfying ending.

Teems previously worked on the Sundance TV drama Rectify and wrote and directed the underrated 2009 drama That Evening Sun , so he’s experienced at delivering slow, meditative stories about redemption. But The Quarry lacks the strong characters and intimate relationships of those other works, and the story is deliberately obtuse and ponderous. A vintage Western would have had the two central adversaries at a gunfight on Main Street within 75 minutes. The Quarry spends its entire running time on a meandering journey to a showdown that never comes.

Starring Shea Whigham, Michael Shannon, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Bruno Bichir, Bobby Soto and Alvaro Martinez, The Quarry is available Friday on VOD.

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The Quarry is the best "playable horror movie" since Until Dawn

After practicing on some less ambitious, less impressive titles, the creators of until dawn have made their second great interactive horror game.

Let’s get this out of the way up top: The Quarry , the new “playable horror movie” from Supermassive Games, is the studio’s best game since 2015's Until Dawn —and it might, in fact, even surpass that blood-soaked streaming favorite in terms of focus and sheer, shocking nastiness.

The Quarry (2020)

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[Movie Review] THE QUARRY

April 13, 2020
Andy Andersen

Watching a small, quiet thriller like THE QUARRY is a firm reminder that casting is still one of cinema’s greatest special effects. There’s just no substitute for a pair of well-placed performers pitting their auras against each other on-screen.

Directed and co-written by Scott Teems ( Rectify, That Evening Sun ) and based on a novel by Damon Galgut, THE QUARRY ‘s main trick is the casting of its two leads – Shea Whigham (HBO regular and perpetually interesting “that guy” in many movies) as a fugitive who murders a traveling preacher and assumes his identity in a small, dilapidated Texas town; and Michael Shannon ( Take Shelter, The Shape of Water ) as sinister Police Chief Moore, who begins to suspect the mysterious preacher plays a role in his murder investigation.

The investigation plot itself is relatively simple and straightforward, giving the story room to take on a morality-play/biblical-fable quality. The filmmaking is pretty straightforward as well, favoring still shots and tempered pacing over everything else. The only thing about the film you might call “flashy” or “stylized” is it’s foreboding, ambient score, which effectively injects a strong sense of dread over the whole piece.

As our nameless drifter begins to preach to the town congregation, largely made up of immigrants, he wins them over with his humble words read directly from the bible. “I just read the words, I’m not the one you’re here for.” He tells a woman in the congregation, unaware that his “sinner’s” position of non-judgment is the very thing that contrasts him with the local authority figure Chief Moore. Even as he wins the town over, we get a sense that things aren’t going to end well for him. The drifter/preacher represents New Testament morality while Chief Moore is Old Testament justice. As the ripple effect of the drifter’s crimes and Moore’s subsequent investigation is felt by the town, the feeling that Old Testament justice will win out becomes unshakable.

The casting of Whigham in the lead role is the film’s true stroke of genius, especially when so much else in the movie doesn’t feel overly exciting or particularly unexpected (not that it’s really meant to). A million other movies like this would’ve cast a younger, more traditionally handsome actor in the role. When a seasoned character actor like Whigham gets a center-stage opportunity like this one, the results are usually quite special, even more so because it happens so rarely.

Point is, THE QUARRY is an amiable and decent little Western-thriller – not necessarily essential 2020 viewing, but if there’s a hook, it’s in the casting. If you’re a fan, even only marginally, of either Whigham or Shannon, THE QUARRY is well worth the extra time you might have during quarantine for a 98-minute, dialogue-heavy movie. As it hums along on a resonant, albeit somber frequency, it’s biblical explorations of sin, redemption, mercy, and justice couldn’t be more proficiently executed by way of Whigham’s and Shannon’s respectively rare talents. THE QUARRY arrives On Demand this Friday, April 17th, 2020.

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Lionsgate Films

Summary After murdering a traveling preacher, a fugitive drifter (Shea Whigham) travels to a small town and poses as the man he killed. Though the congregation loves the drifter’s sermons of forgiveness, the local police chief (Michael Shannon) is suspicious of the man. Soon a gruesome discovery at a local quarry forces the killer to fight for h ... Read More

Directed By : Scott Teems

Written By : Scott Teems, Andrew Brotzman, Damon Galgut

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Michael shannon, chief john moore, catalina sandino moreno, bruno bichir, david martín, belleza the waitress, alvaro martinez, abel becerra, deputy garcia, jimmy gonzales, deputy blanco, rose bianco, hector presedo, raul ruletta, anthony reynolds, hollis the public defender, david jensen, gordon dexheimer, district attorney, adam tierney, man in cafe, critic reviews.

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The Quarry review: "A fun but poorly paced horror adventure"

GamesRadar+ Verdict

A fun but poorly paced horror adventure that's both slow to start and over too fast

Looks fantastic

Some great moments

A couple of really good performances

Takes forever to get going

Finishes as soon as it gets good

Struggles with its large cast

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

It takes a good four or more hours for The Quarry to really take off. By the end it's a blast, and exactly what I hoped the game would be - lots of screaming, lots of blood, and a general cavalcade of close escapes, near misses, and very definite deaths. But with an overblown cast spread across numerous narrative threads, it spends a long time trying to achieve, and then maintain, any decent sense of momentum. For the longest time, whenever it feels like things are about to get going, the story jumps between characters and beats, resetting the pace and leaving tension as a fleeting feeling that rarely settles.

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, PS4, Xbox One

Release date: June 10, 2022

Developer: Supermassive Games

Publisher: 2K Games

The basic setup is classic horror movie fare: there's a bunch of kids having one last night at a summer camp but [spooky voice] there's something else in the woods [spooky voice ends] and, as the night wears on, the death count starts to rise. I'm going to avoid spoilers completely here, which might make things weirdly vague, but let's just say there's some sort of threat out there and that threat really wants to make things dead in as many pieces as possible.

The early parts largely set up how everything works as you meet the cast of teens you'll be trying to save/kill. This feels like even more of an interactive movie than previous Supermassive games like Until Dawn or the Dark Pictures anthology, with long cinematic scenes where you largely steer between choices as you get to know your victims. That might be choosing what you say or do, with both dialogue and actions getting selected on the fly as things play out. The gameplay also involves exploration - mixing third-person wandering with prompt matching action where you copy on-screen buttons to dodge or attack and so on.

The further you get in the more the gameplay takes over, but for most of the first half of my roughly eight and a half-hour playtime, I largely steered people through conversations. Which was okay because there's a good cast here and I happily watched it all play out - establishing characters and backstories, while shadows out of view and shady-looking locals muttering cryptically built a sense of impending danger. There are a couple of really great stand-out performances, although I can't really say who because it will definitely spoil things at the start if you know who ends up taking centre stage at the end. Countering that, though, there are a couple of high profile castings who barely appear, with either seconds of screen time or a scant handful of lines, which is a bit of a shame considering the talent involved.

A tangled web

When things do properly start - and by start, I mean screaming and death - they also sort of… don't. If the first 2-3 hours are enjoyable world-building, and the last couple hours are a fun and gory conclusion, the 2-3 hours in the middle just sort of treads water between all the moving parts that have yet to coalesce; jumping back and forth between things so much it barely advances anything despite almost everyone being covered from head to foot in blood. Once this blood has been spilled you'd expect things to start hacking along at a decent clip but there are so many people in play, spread so far and wide in different locations, that jumping between everything constantly kills the pace. Just as you get a taste of excitement it cuts away to someone else and spends a few minutes setting things up to remind you where they were or what they were doing.

There's basically too many characters. The end of the game shows you nearly 20 people that can live and die depending on your choices. Not all of them are playbable, but it's still a big roster - almost twice the size of Until Dawn. As a result the middle just spends too much time spinning plates, when everyone knows the fun part is watching them fall. The story has great potential but gets held back by that extensive cast all needing to be kept roughly on the same page. The internal logic of the story only holds up if the player knows no more than the in-game people, so no one person can get too far ahead. It's telling that, as the ending really kicks off, several of my survivors were literally shut away in rooms or sealed locations and taken off the board, while others pretty much seemed to survive on a coin toss in the final minutes.

That final hour or so feels like the game feeds whoever's left into a grinder and lets you sort through the paste. While playing you're constantly threatened with the dread message 'path chosen' as you make decisions, pick up items and sometimes just say things. Every time it happens it sows a little worry seed about how it's going to come back and bite you in the ass and, when it reaps, all these teased consequences start paying off - that character that just survived ends up being the only thing that saves someone else later; some bit of tat you took or left seals another's fate, and so on. For the most part, it feels fair… ish. If bad things did happen it felt like it was on me, or at least I could see the path that led to the result; while the button matching stuff is clearly enough telegraphed, with some safety buffer slow-mo so that you rarely feel caught out.

It's worth noting here that I played the version of the game with the Death Rewind system that gives you three lives - a feature that lets you replay up to three deaths to avoid them. It's unlocked by finishing the game or buying the Deluxe Edition, but feels like quite a fundamental element to hand out to some players and not others. I enjoyed the inclusion as it lets you have fun with gory deaths but also keep the characters you like.

Quickest finger wins

Although, that said, I lost two characters by the end and I will absolutely climb on a hill called bullshit and take a seat forever. One person died, having not been seen for 20 minutes, when I told another character I was currently controlling to run. This option actually translates into 'push a button that's just come out of nowhere and then run'. That button then directly caused the other completely unrelated person in a completely different area to die. The other death occurred when someone I hadn't seen for so long I'd completely forgotten about them reappeared - they popped up, got to make a single A/B decision, and one option straight up instakills them.

While it's slow to start, or pick up pace, by the time The Quarry ended I had enjoyed its inconsistent journey. There are some good sections and great moments, and there's a nice collectible element where interlinked clues expand and fill out the backstory if you find related items, and I enjoyed trying to second guess what was going on. But I did spend most of my time playing waiting for things to get properly going only for it to end almost as soon as it did. There's a decent stab here at a slasher movie-style Horny Teen Murder Simulator but one that feels unbalanced by the size of its cast. Less people might have actually allowed the final act, where all the best stuff happens, to open more but as it stands there's a lot more setup than there is payoff.

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for guides, which means I run GamesRadar's guides and tips content . I also write reviews, previews and features, largely about horror, action adventure, FPS and open world games. I previously worked on Kotaku, and the Official PlayStation Magazine and website.

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The Quarry review: thrills, chills, and only a few spills await

Time to love the monster mash again

This review mentions that you get three do-overs to save a character's life. This is only available in your first play through in the deluxe version of the game, which I wasn't aware I was reviewing. The feature unlocks in the standard version after you've completed a full play through.

I'm going to do my absolute best to tell you about The Quarry with no spoilers, but it will be hard because a lot of what marks it out as better and cleverer and funner than comparable horrorventure romps is all tangled up in the plot. It's an interactive story you control with split-second decisions and quick time events; it is mostly plot. Broadly, it is the story of a group of camp counselors, one night in a quarry-based summer camp, and how baffling organisational choice can lead to ruin.

You join the cool young adults of Hackett's Quarry summer camp having just said goodbye to all the children who they'd been in loco parentis-ing for a month. Suddenly: car trouble! Everyone is going to have to stay another night at the camp, something which comprehensively alarms Mr. H (David Arquette, who appeared for about five minutes total of my eight-ish hour playthrough, so fans may have buyer's remorse on this front). It turns out this is because Hackett's Quarry is both a) haunted and b) full of monsters, which frankly seems irresponsible to keep such a child-centric organisation open under such circumstances, but that is just one of Chris Hackett's baffling decisions you will uncover over the course of your adventure.

The aim of the game is to keep as many people alive as possible - and this number extends beyond the core group that you have control over, by the way. Like Until Dawn or any of The Dark Pictures Anthology games before, this depends on the complex, cumulative warp and weft of your choices and actions. If you don't open a door right at the start, could this affect things later? How will things change if you're mean to Ted Raimi's weirdo cop character Travis? Your friend is in trouble, so you should probably take the shortcut through the woods - but then you'll have to pass a bunch of QTEs too.

For the most part you know how this goes, but some innovations this time include three lives you can expend to undo the death of a character by taking you back to the last choice that sealed their fate, slightly easier QTEs, but also QTEs that you might want to fail... on purpose - let's just say that two people struggling over a shotgun rarely ends well - and leave it at that. This adds an interesting extra variable to the feverish mental calculations you're having to run the whole time (among others, which I won't mention because spoilers). You're working partly on instinct and partly on cheaty player knowledge, because even if your character doesn't know where that trapdoor leads, you definitely do.

Dylan, one of the camp counsellors from The Quarry, looks at a creepy security camera system

By virtue of being slightly easier to play, physically, than other Dark Pictures makes The Quarry easier to enjoy, too. It gives you more room to concentrate on remembering that you forgot that one crucial thing two hours ago. You can see how the story can turn out very differently as well, and even the results I got for my set of survivors made me want to try again - though not enough that I'd give it a full playthrough, I don't think. There's the return of a two-player couch co-op, but you can also select specific chapters to replay, or a kind of movie version of the game to see an 'everyone lives' or 'everyone dies' ending. This is still a hefty time investment, though.

As for myself, I decided early on that I would only expend one of my precious do-overs if a character died who I really liked. As the game went on this actually became all of the characters, something of a great success for an almost entirely character-driven game. Standouts for me were Jacob the surprisingly sensitive bro, Kaitlyn the actually practical one, and Dylan the sarcastic DJ who is actually really nerdy. The cast spend a decent amount of time split up, which helps because the Marvel effect (where everyone is a different flavour of wisecracker) rears its head very quickly. This made Ryan (played by Justice "Detective Pikachu" Smith) my absolute favourite by the end, simply because of his status as a normal, nice, chill person who listens to podcasts.

Perhaps the greater achievement is that I had several deaths that I just let ride, because they were so good, so implausible and needlessly graphic in that retro slasher way that leans close to being actually funny. The Quarry plays with horror tropes and vibes much more freely than the Dark Pictures games since Until Dawn, and twists them in fun ways. There are a couple of big switcheroos in the plot in general, but it is, for example, likely that the character spending most of their time running around the forest in their pants is going to be a dude, and in any situation it's usually a girl that leads from the front and takes charge. This does apply to almost every woman in the game, and it becomes a bit exhausting watching them all Girlboss at once sometimes, like all the Deadpool variations strutting around a Comic-Con crowd, but I'll take it.

Less successful is your between-chapters guide, a mysterious old woman for whom you're collecting hidden tarot cards, and, related to her, an element of plot connected to a travelling sideshow. The Quarry almost defies your expectations and avoids the tired tropes there, but not quite (and heads up for a couple of uses of a word I know in the US is considered a slur for the GRT community, though it isn't in the UK).

So, The Quarry isn't perfect by any means, and you can throw in some QTE or choice moments that feel like they cheated you on top of that. But even if it were perfect, its full price entry sticker might still feel like a pretty big ask for some people. It's also not actually that frightening, if I'm honest. Instead, it goes more for "tense and thrilling" even at its most hightened moments. But The Quarry improves on almost all the flaws of Supermassive's Dark Pictures Anthology, and picks up the baton from Until Dawn as if all those years haven't passed at all. It's cool, creepy, a bit funny, and a great summer horror treat for anyone missing monster movies.

The Quarry - Review

A fun, bloody thrill ride on your first playthrough..

Like many of developer Supermassive’s previous games, The Quarry is clearly made both by and for people who love horror movies. From the start, it slowly builds tension and atmosphere, getting you invested by constantly asking you to make small decisions that will guide its teenage cast of potential murder victims. By the time the blood started flying, every choice felt like one more step in a rolling disaster, and that made it nearly impossible to put down. When I went back to replay it again, however, it was impossible to ignore just how non-interactive much of The Quarry actually is. As a spiritual sequel to Until Dawn , it's a better movie, but a worse game.

You follow the story of nine camp counselors who get stuck in the woods for one more night at the end of the summer, with nothing to do but throw one last party before they go back to their lives. There's something stalking them from the treeline (because of course there is) and your choices determine which, if any, of the counselors will be able to survive the night. This setup layers three fairly textbook horror plots on top of each other as you progress, but you can tell that Supermassive Games had a lot of fun figuring out how to connect them together. When you play, you may think you're in one type of horror movie, but you're often in another.

The title location of The Quarry is a summer camp in upstate New York, Hackett's Quarry, that's slowly falling apart. It's initially designed to look like the most postcard-worthy version of itself, backlit by warm sunlight and spread out across approximately a billion acres of natural splendor. It’s a Hollywood version of the perfect summer experience, with colorful cinematography that makes the whole camp look like somebody’s cherished memory. Then the sun goes down, the woods get dangerously quiet, the rot gets more obvious, and the nightmare starts.

You play as each of the nine camp counselors, controlling one at a time at various points in the roughly 10-hour campaign. You can influence how its events play out through exploration scenes, conversation choices, quick time events, stealth, simple combat, and Mass Effect-style interruptions where you have a short window in which to make a sudden move. There are a lot of accessibility options built into The Quarry that let you adjust the difficulty of all of these actions, or even switch some of them to always automatically succeed. There's also a Movie Mode that lets the story play out without any interactivity at all, headed towards one of a few different preset conclusions. While you'll see most of what there is to see in Movie Mode, you will miss a couple of major events, many optional ones, and a lot of story context that can only come from playing manually.

You don't have to have twitch reflexes to get through The Quarry.

While I was never personally interested in using Movie Mode, I can appreciate that it exists. Even without it, you don't have to have solid twitch reflexes to get through The Quarry in the way you did with parts of Until Dawn. In fact, there are several scenes where failing something like a quick time event doesn't necessarily have a bad outcome, which makes them more like snap decisions rather than mechanical challenges.

The primary issue with The Quarry is that it’s less of a game and more of a lightly interactive movie for most of its running time. You can go for surprisingly long stretches without having to make a meaningful choice or take direct control of a character. All you're asked to do is watch.

In general, my favorite part of Until Dawn, as well as the games in Supermassive’s Dark Pictures Anthology , was that it was at least as much of a mystery as it was a horror movie. During the adventure game-style exploration sequences, you had the chance to try and find crucial details about what was happening by discovering clues, reading files, solving puzzles, and occasionally falling into what was, with the benefit of hindsight, a really obvious trap. There isn’t anywhere near as much of that in The Quarry. You do have the chance to unravel some of the weird history behind the camp and the area around it, but it feels like an afterthought that left me disappointed.

Another issue is that you can't skip past cutscenes or dialogue that you've already seen on repeat playthroughs. In Until Dawn, that was a mild headache; in The Quarry, which is longer and considerably less interactive, it's frustrating. I’d like to replay The Quarry more than I have. There’s a lot of fun in going back through it and deliberately making different decisions, or even failing on purpose just to see what happens. I was still finding surprises on my third run, and it’s a testament to how absorbing this setting and story can actually be that I was willing to make that third run in the first place.

It would be a more entertaining process with a few important quality-of-life features that are missing. A better scene selector would be nice, as well as a run button, a fast-forward option, or better-labeled points of no return. As it is, any attempt to replay The Quarry involves actual hours of dead time, where all you can do is sit and watch it play itself out again.

The Movie Within the Movie

The Quarry is deliberately meant to have a lighter tone than Supermassive's other horror games, in a way that its director compared to Scream , which is backed up by the casting of David Arquette as Hackett’s Quarry’s way-too-into-this-whole-thing head counselor. It's very self-aware right from the start, with a cast of characters who have all seen at least one horror movie before and are acting accordingly.

At the same time, The Quarry's storyline feels like Supermassive's learned a lot from its past projects and is putting that experience to work. It feels more confident, with a more solid, coherent plot structure. There are still plenty of twists, but they’re carefully calculated, and a few actually managed to take me by surprise.

The cast of motion-captured actors are a particular highlight. A couple of them do still get relatively little to do, and I'd hoped to see more of Lance Hendriksen’s creepy backwoods hunter, but most of the characters are genuinely likable and you're given plenty of time to get to know them. Ariel Winter, Siobhan Williams, and Justice Smith as Abigail, Laura, and Ryan, respectively, are all particular standouts, and Brenda Song as Kaitlyn somehow manages to end up as the biggest badass in the cast.

The characters in The Quarry don't actually act as if they're in a horror movie, however. Many of them are operating on a level of ironic detachment that occasionally verges on self-parody, especially if you're on a run where the body count is still fairly low. I've run into multiple sequences where my current characters were still talking earnestly about their petty relationship drama despite being covered in someone else’s blood.

If it was aiming for Scream, it overshot and hit The Cabin in the Woods.

No scene is dramatic enough that it can't be derailed by a half-joke, and no amount of recent personal horror is enough to keep someone from landing the perfect sick burn. It doesn't come off as awareness of their medium as much as outright traumatic dissociation. In horror terms, if Supermassive Games was aiming for Scream, it overshot and ended up with The Cabin in the Woods .

The Verdict

The Quarry is worth playing at least once, but when compared to Until Dawn, it's one step forward and one step back. It features a solid script performed by a great cast, with a slow-burn story that you can guide to a few different satisfying (or anticlimactic) conclusions. It's not as interactive as I'd like it to be, though, and that makes replaying it as intended a chore. It's still a fun experience, particularly on your first time through it, but Supermassive Games' formula could use some quality-of-life improvements.

The Quarry Review

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COMMENTS

The Quarry movie review & film summary (2020)
Powered by JustWatch. In "The Quarry," a preacher by the name of David Martin (Shea Whigam) arrives in the small and economically devastated West Texas town of Bevel to become the latest person to head up its sole and sparsely attended church. His arrival is not auspicious—the night he arrives, his van is broken into and everything he has ...
The Quarry (2020)
Rated 5/5 Stars • Rated 5 out of 5 stars 08/14/23 Full Review Ashley H The Quarry is an okay film. It is about a drifter who kills a traveling preacher and takes his place at a small-town church ...
The Quarry Review
The Movie Within the Movie. The Quarry is deliberately meant to have a lighter tone than Supermassive's other horror games, in a way that its director compared to Scream, which is backed up by the ...
'The Quarry' Review: Traveling With a Guilty Conscience
April 16, 2020. The Quarry. Directed by Scott Teems. Crime, Mystery, Thriller. R. 1h 38m. Find Tickets. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an ...
The Quarry
The Quarry Reviews. With this film many of the best moments are spent watching and absorbing two wily pros like Shannon and Whigham work out a scene. Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 24 ...
The Quarry (2020) Movie Review
The premise of this film boasts so much thrilling potential, but often, it feels as if Teems is holding back from unleashing its full power. The Quarry is very much a slow-burn, but rather than leaning into an explosive finale, it fizzles towards the finish line. Although there are a variety of aspects to the film that tout intriguing character ...
The Quarry Movie Review
Our review: Parents say: Not yet rated Rate movie. Kids say: Not yet rated Rate movie. A dusty, rural crime story, this slow-paced drama doesn't dig very deep, but the sun-baked, wind-blown setting and the nuanced performances by the two gifted lead actors make it well worth a look. Based on a novel by South African writer Damon Galgut (which ...
The Quarry
The Quarry is rated R, and as such it has some obvious problems—especially when it comes to the film's sometimes raw language. Like the stranger at the movie's core, this story isn't spotless. And yet there's truth here, and it's that the truth itself—and confessing that truth—can indeed set people free. That freedom comes with ...
The Quarry Review: A Pat Morality Play about Sin and Penance
Read Matt Goldberg's The Quarry review; Scott Teems' movie stars Shea Whigham, Michael Shannon, Bobby Soto, and Catalina Sandino Moreno.
The Quarry (2020 film)
The Quarry is a 2020 American mystery thriller film directed by Scott Teems, from a screenplay by Teems and Andrew Brotzman, based upon the 1995 novel of the same name by Damon Galgut.It stars Shea Whigham, Michael Shannon, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Bobby Soto, Bruno Bichir and Alvaro Martinez.. It was released on April 17, 2020 in theaters by Lionsgate.
Movie Review
The Quarry, 2020. Directed by Scott Teems. Starring Shea Whigham, Michael Shannon, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Bobby Soto, Alvaro Martinez, and Bruno Bichir. SYNOPSIS: A drifter (Shea Whigham) kills ...
Movie Review: The Quarry (2020)
In his third directorial effort, writer/director Scott Teems brings us The Quarry, a film that seeks to explore one such permeated community and its citizens' journeys to find absolution, but never really offers a dense perspective or a substantial resolution. The film begins with a nameless wanderer, known as The Man (Shea Whigham, " Joker ...
REVIEW: The Quarry Is a Ponderous, Uninvolving Crime Thriller
The Quarry spends its entire running time on a meandering journey to a showdown that never comes. Starring Shea Whigham, Michael Shannon, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Bruno Bichir, Bobby Soto and Alvaro Martinez, The Quarry is available Friday on VOD. KEEP READING: Getaway Is a Weak Horror Movie and a Waste of Scout Taylor-Compton's Talent
The Quarry is the best "playable horror movie" since Until Dawn
The premise is B-movie simple, B-movie effective: Horny/mopey camp counselors engineer an extra night of summer camp for themselves; flirtation, party games, and elaborate dismemberment ensue.
The Quarry (2020)
Shea Whigham and Michael Shannon are at their world class best. In particular Whigham playing the conflicted criminal who assumes the identity of the cleric he murders. The story itself is a slow burner with some holes but the performance of the leads are captivating. 9 out of 10 found this helpful.
The Quarry (2020) Movie Reviews
The Quarry (2020) Critic Reviews and Ratings Powered by Rotten Tomatoes. Close Audience Score. The percentage of users who made a verified movie ticket purchase and rated this 3.5 stars or higher. Learn more. Review Submitted. GOT IT. Offers SEE ALL OFFERS. GIFT A TICKET TO THE COLOR PURPLE image link ...
[Movie Review] THE QUARRY
Point is, THE QUARRY is an amiable and decent little Western-thriller - not necessarily essential 2020 viewing, but if there's a hook, it's in the casting. If you're a fan, even only marginally, of either Whigham or Shannon, THE QUARRY is well worth the extra time you might have during quarantine for a 98-minute, dialogue-heavy movie ...
The Quarry
After murdering a traveling preacher, a fugitive drifter (Shea Whigham) travels to a small town and poses as the man he killed. Though the congregation loves the drifter's sermons of forgiveness, the local police chief (Michael Shannon) is suspicious of the man. Soon a gruesome discovery at a local quarry forces the killer to fight for his freedom.
'The Quarry' Review: A Stabby Good Time
The Quarry. Credit: 2K. Back in May, I was privy to a preview for The Quarry, Supermassive Games' new teen horror interactive slasher movie, and I walked (ran?) away wanting more.More scares ...
Has anyone played The Quarry yet? Is it good? Is it worth it?
If you want a cheap trial of the Quarry, this is pretty good advice. Until Dawn isn't great, but so far The Quarry has been excellent. Everything that worked in Until Dawn they do better in Quarry. The couch co-op mode is rad. My friends and I played Until Dawn in one mammoth 8 hour stretch so it totally felt like a long interactive movie.
The Quarry review: "A fun but poorly paced horror adventure"
The basic setup is classic horror movie fare: there's a bunch of kids having one last night at a summer camp but [spooky voice] there's something else in the woods [spooky voice ends] and, as the ...
The Quarry review: thrills, chills, and only a few spills await
The Quarry review. The Quarry is a thrilling-ish monster-movie in game form. The charismatic characters and tropey twists get this loose series of games back on a fun, classic horror trope track - with a bit of gore thrown in. This review mentions that you get three do-overs to save a character's life.
The Quarry
The Movie Within the Movie. The Quarry is deliberately meant to have a lighter tone than Supermassive's other horror games, in a way that its director compared to Scream, which is backed up by the casting of David Arquette as Hackett's Quarry's way-too-into-this-whole-thing head counselor. It's very self-aware right from the start, with a ...

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