I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore is a dark comedy/crime thiller written and directed by indie actor Macon Blair in his directorial debut. The film stars Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood as Ruth and Tony, two loners who decide to strike back at the general indecency of the world after Ruth's home is burglarized.
The film premiered on Netflix in February, 2017.
Tropes include:
- Accidental Aiming Skills: Tony is just terrible with his throwing stars, so when he gets one lodged in Dez's face in the finale, he's the most surprised person in the room.
- Animal Assassin: Ruth kills Marshall by knocking him into a pond, where he is bitten to death by a water moccasin snake that Ruth herself had narrowly avoided earlier.
- Anti-Climax Boss: Invoked. After being set up as a creepy and dangerous threat, Christian Jr. is the first of the crooks to die when his attempt at intimidating Ruth backfires and leads to his windpipe being accidentally crushed and his body being flattened by a bus within minutes.
- Asshole Victim: All three of the crooks and Christian Rumack Sr.
- Bait-and-Switch: After Tony passes out from his injuries, we see Ruth going about her life alone. At a barbecue, she looks over her shoulder and sees Tony smiling down on her with a heavenly haze around him, but it's not an Imagine Spot. He's alive and well, standing at the smoking barbecuing.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Christian Jr. enters a house party to rob it pretends to be a guest despite looking out of place among the middle-class professionals. When he's finally questioned, he claims to know the host through "work," but it doesn't go over well.
- Being Evil Sucks: Marshall and his two flunkies live in a van in the woods, pulling petty crimes to scrounge up enough cash to buy a few shoddy guns. Marshall himself is a middle-aged and balding man who wears a dental bridge. In spite of his sway over his followers, he's clearly a bottom-feeder in the underworld and gets mocked by the only other criminal they meet in the film. After the criminal punches Marshall out, Christian and Dez are ashamed.
- Big Damn Heroes: Tony comes in with a throwing star, which he chucks at Dez' face.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Tony is quite an eccentric character, to say the least. He seems to be aware of this, as he admits at one point that he often has his head so far up in the clouds that he neglects to pay attention to his surroundings.
- Cool Car: Ruth drives a matte-black 1979 Pontiac Firebird that looks like something an action hero would drive. However, it's in rather poor great condition, and Christian Sr. calls it a "shit box."
- Crapsack World: A major theme of the film is Ruth's growing perception that life is pointless and everyone is a jerk.
- Creator Cameo: Writer/director Macon Blair cameos as the man in the bar who spoils Ruth's book.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Each of the three crooks. Christian Jr. has his windpipe crushed by Ruth and gets hit by a bus when he attempts to flee. Dez gets a ninja star to the face, her hand blown off after her gun misfires and is killed by a ricocheting bullet to the head. Finally, Marshall gets a venomous snake bite to the face and spends his last scene crawling in a swamp and dying a slow death.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: While he's in the middle of a heated argument with Ruth, Detective Bendix suddenly starts sobbing uncontrollably, much to her bewilderment. He then admits that his wife wants a divorce, which is why he's been acting so abrasively lately. However, when Ruth tries to console him by holding his hand, he abruptly shuts her down and tells her to remove her hand.
- Drink-Based Characterization: Tony is usually seen drinking bottles of Big Red soda, which establishes him as a fairly wholesome Manchild. He leaves one for Ruth when she crashes on his couch. In the final scene, Ruth drinks one, showing that Tony's more optimistic outlook as grown on her. The beverage also indicates that the film takes place somewhere in the South.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- At the consignment store, Ruth and Tony pass by a rocking horse with a sign posted on it saying "Not an Actual Horse."
- Tony's computer desktop has multiple spreadsheets for his workout routines.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Despite all the violence and deaths throughout the story, the surviving characters all receive some kind of happy ending: Meredith escapes the shootout at the Rumack mansion unharmed and doesn't report Ruth to the police out of gratefulness for saving her life. Detective Bendix' wife decides to give their marriage another chance. Tony survives his injuries and stays friends with Ruth. Ruth's life is still far from perfect, but she's sticking up for herself more, is enjoying a new friendship, and has a more optimistic outlook.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: The arms dealer who sells Marshall the sawed-off decks him afterward for making a Your Mom joke at him.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Despite the obvious estrangement and animosity between the two Christian Sr. actually seems pretty heartbroken when Marshall tells him Christian Jr. is dead. Additionally, Marshall sobs and kisses Dez on the head when he realizes she's dead.
- Everyone Has Standards: The people who have Ruth's computer are obviously sketchy people. They engage in drunken firework hijinks, and one of them seems to stand guard at their door smoking pot. They also must have known that the laptop they purchased was stolen property because all of Ruth's files were still on it. However, when Ruth proves that it belongs to her by activating her "Find My Laptop" app, they're shamed enough to give it back, along with the power cord, and give her the address of where they bought it.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When Ruth confronts Christian Sr. about his son's criminal behavior, he just shrugs it off and apathetically asks her how much she wants as compensation for the damage. He's visibly confused when Ruth tells him that she is not interested in money — she just wants Christian Jr. to apologize for what he has done.
- Extremely Short Timespan: Takes place over two days: the day of the burglary and the day afterward.
- Fingore:
- Ruth's finger gets broken in a scuffle and spends the rest of the film in a splint.
- During the climax, Dez mutilates Chris Sr.'s hand with her shotgun, only to suffer the same fate shortly afterwards when the same gun misfires and explodes in her hands.
- Foreign Culture Fetish: Tony is obviously a big fan of Asian martial arts, given his ownership of "nunchaku" and throwing stars as well as his strict observance of their correct names and countries of origin.
- Foreshadowing:
- In the first scene, where Ruth stares up at the stars in her backyard, you can see the screen door hanging open behind her that Christian Jr. will eventually use to slip inside.
- The camera zooms in on the rusted barrels of the sawed-off shotgun several times before it misfires.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Dez blasts off her fingers with her own shotgun thanks to a weapons malfunction.
- Hollywood Hacking: Parodied. Tony is revealed as utterly clueless about it, barely being able to use a browser in the first place. He still manages to track the van... after Ruth gives her credit card number and pays a fee at some shady site.
- Impersonating an Officer: To track down the burglars, Ruth and Tony eventually get themselves to Christian's house, by flashing a cereal box toy badge to Junior's step-mom. She seems to buy into their act and invites them in, offering a chat and coffee. When Christian Sr. gets inside, it's revealed she knew they weren't police, but is so bored, she still went with it anyway.
- Improvised Weapon: Ruth ends up wielding the bag with the footprint evidence against Christian Jr., who made the footprint to begin with, and crushes his windpipe with it by mistake.
- Jerkass: Christian Rumack Sr. is a cynical, alcoholic jerk who doesn't care about his wife and son, and viciously mocks Ruth's idealistic worldview. Ruth comments that it's easy to see how his son turned out the way he did.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While he's acting out his failing marriage, Detective Bendix is absolutely right for calling out Ruth on her vigilantism, snooping around and selfish nature - along with mentioning she could avoid all that trouble if she simply kept her doors locked when not home.
- Kick the Dog: Christian Jr. is introduced giving the house he's robbing an upperdecker by shitting into the flush tank. This establishes that he's not just a thief, he's an asshole as well.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After shooting apart Chris Sr.'s hand, Dez gets her own hand blown to bits when her gun backfires.
- Lethally Stupid: The trio of criminals is shown repeatedly as being absolutely incapable of thinking about consequences of their actions. Which is also what makes them so dangerous to just be around - not to mention being their target.
- Long List: Tony rattles off all the designs he can make in cappuccino foam, and the list never seems to end. He even includes Kevin in his list, even though the person he's talking to has no idea who that is.
- Meaningful Background Event: When Ruth canvases the neighborhood for clues about the robbery, we see Christian Jr. ride by her on a bicycle, clearly scoping out future robberies.
- Meet Cute: Subverted. Early in the movie Ruth sits a bar reading a fantasy novel. A man (played by director Macon Blair) walks up to the bar and sparks a conversation with her, revealing that he is a fan of the book. The two start to bond before the man nonchalantly spoils an important plot point, collects his beer order and returns to his friends.
- Miles Gloriosus: Tony obviously has an overinflated impression of his fighting abilities. He talks about training martial arts and owns a collection of hand weapons, including nunchaku, shuriken, and a morning star. He's very pedantic about their proper names, presenting himself as an expert. However, he's clearly not very good at using them. When he brandishes his morning star at a tough, the guy snatches it right out of his hand, leaving him gawking. He later chucks his throwing star into a wall as a means of intimidation, then struggles to pull it out again. He tries to save face by asserting, "That's how hard I threw it!" Later, he manages to kick a man and knock him out, proudly proclaiming, "Side kick!" On the ride back home, he yammers on and on about how powerful side kicks are when properly performed, apparently heedless of the reality that the man he knocked out was quite elderly and didn't even see it coming.
- Mood Whiplash:
- A major source of the humor in the film, starting when Ruth and Tony are staking out the suspected burglars, who she's witnessed shooting a watermelon apart and being rowdy about it. Cut to Tony's dog in the back seat.
- The majority of the film plays out as a Black Comedy, and the violence is mostly Played for Laughs. This changes drastically once the story reaches its climax, at which point it turns into a deadly serious crime thriller, culminating in an extremely gory shootout and an intense chase scene.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Played with when Tony uses his computer to find the owner of the van. He presents himself as a hacker and furiously types away while exciting music plays. When we see the screen, however, he's just googling how to look up that information and then using a website that charges to do it for you. All the while, he's narrating how the internet is like a web of spiders, and Ruth notes that he's not exactly the first person to use that analogy.
- No Social Skills: Tony is socially awkward and admits that people tend to find him obnoxious.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Ruth and Tony try to pass themselves off as detectives by using a plastic badge taken from a cereal box. They drive to the location in Ruth's old muscle car, and they're both wearing very casual clothes. Meredith seems too sauced and oblivious to notice, but she actually sees through them right away and was simply too bored to confront them. She even winks at them when telling Christian Sr. that they're cops. He has no problem immediately calling them out.
- Pet the Dog: Tony is introduced as the first person to show any remorse for his thoughtless action. He apologizes and picks up the dog poop. He pets the dog again when Ruth notes that they're reading the same book, and he immediately tells her not to spoil anything because he hates when people do that. Ruth already had someone spoil a big reveal the previous day.
- Police Are Useless: The police repeatedly refuse to help Ruth and dismiss everything she says, causing her to take the law into her own hands; which they also criticize after she comes to them with evidence about the three burglars.
- Pretty Little Headshots: After all the carnage that the other gunshots wreak, the bullet that hits Dez in the forehead just leaves a small hole.
- Racist Grandma: An elderly woman Ruth tends to makes vulgar and racist remarks about black protesters on TV just before she dies. Ruth is then put in the awkward position of being asked if she said anything in the end. The scene cuts before she see her answer.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Detective Bendix delivers one to Ruth when she accuses him of not doing his job properly, telling her with Brutal Honesty that the universe doesn't revolve around her, that she wouldn't have to worry about the burglary if she had simply locked her door, and that he has to deal with far worse crimes than the theft of some silverware. Especially since she retrieved it herself.
- Reliably Unreliable Guns: The antiquated, half-rusted sawed-off shotgun predictably misfires in the worst moment possible. And takes Dez's hand with it.
- Reveal Shot
- Ruth calls someone to talk to after her break-in. We then see her venting to someone about how "the violation" was the worst part of being burgled. We then cut to a different angle to reveal that she's talking to a little girl who is far too young for this sort of subject.
- When Ruth and Tony drive up to scope out the location of her missing computer, a follow-up shot reveals that they've brought along Tony's dog Kevin in the back seat for some reason.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Subverted. When Ruth interviews a barefooted black woman holding a baby, she asks if she's seen anyone acting "furtive," then immediately clarifies that she means "sneaky." The black woman annoyedly asserts that she knows what "furtive" means.
- Shout-Out:
- The Rumacks' home includes a "Walden Pond room." Appropriately enough, they live lakeside.
- Meredith compares her stepson Christian Jr. to Damien from The Omen.
- Tony is a huge fan of Saxon and is heard listening to them several times. He wears a Saxon t-shirt on the second day of the film, and his bedroom has Saxon merch. The band's Twitter account even posted an acknowledgement of the character.
- Skewed Priorities: Tony sees nothing wrong with vigilante justice, even if it includes threatening people with lethal weapons and kicking an old man in the head, but believes that Ruth has gone too far when she steals a garden sculpture from Christian Rumack Sr. as revenge for ridiculing her.
- Straw Nihilist:
- Ruth's frustration with what she sees as a cruel and uncaring world causes her to adopt the view that life is meaningless and there's no use in trying to be a moral person, which is why she decides to go above the law and avenge herself on those who she believes to have wronged her. Ultimately subverted, as it becomes clear over the course of the story that despite her nihilistic platitudes, she is still a fundamentally good person and doesn't intend to seriously harm anyone.
- The trope is played straight, however, with Christian Rumack Sr., who seems to use his extremely cynical view of the world as a justification for his own immoral behavior.
- Stupid Crooks: Marshall, Dez and Christian Jr. are remarkably inept crooks and are told so to their face, though they are no less dangerous. Detective Bendix notes that the crooks would have already wiped Ruth's laptop (along with her laptop location app) if they weren't complete morons. The next day, however, her app is revealed to still be active. Their incompetence leads them to rummaging through entire stack of bonds and ignoring them in search for cash. In general, they brutally and without any hesitation kill people who are in their way. It's made clear throughout the story they are outright too dumb to consider the consequences of their actions, making the situation far more dangerous than it should be.
- Sunglasses at Night: One of the arms dealer's friends, who's even nicknamed "Sunglasses at Night" in the credits.
- Tap on the Head: Dez KOs Ruth when she and Marshall spot her calling the cops after Christian Jr.'s death. Notably, Ruth ends up with open wound in her forehead and is clearly not ok when she regains consciousness.
- Tattooed Crook: Marshall sports tattoos, a few of which he's done himself. Ruth says they look stupid. Dez takes it a step further, having tattoos on her forehead.
- Trophy Wife: Meredith is heavily implied to be one, considering that she is stated to be Chris Sr.'s second wife and looks noticeably younger and more attractive than him. The fact that he leaves her alone at the mansion for most of the day and outright ignores her when he is at home makes it quite obvious that he married her because of her good looks rather than her personality.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Ruth vomits violently after Dez shoots off most of Christian Sr.'s fingers with her shotgun.
- Your Mom: Marshall delivers such a joke to the arms dealer. After the deal is done, he gets slugged for it.
