So what do you do when you reach adulthood and discover your parents weren't who you thought they were? That's the problem that haunts Andrew Morrison, the central character of Stillwater, an ambling southern gothic that follows its lead character into a descent into madness. The debut feature of its writer, director, editor and producer Adrian Kays, the film, like its main character, is something of a cypher, and its rewards depend entirely on what kind of effort the viewer puts into it.

As the film begins, adoptee Andrew (played with a perpetual stone face and softspoken manner by Andrew Hulse) discovers a box in his step-parents' basement that may contain some clues as to the identity of his birth parents. He discovers a watch engraved with a name, some patches from a military uniform, and a smattering of other mementos, and soon contacts a private investigator who leads him to his birth mother.

Unfortunately, upon receiving a letter from the son she gave up years ago, Andrew's birth mother decides the best course of action is to blow her brains out. And when he tries to investigate a little on his own, tracking down the woman whose name is engraved in the watch he found in the box, it leads him to an angry old farmer who tells him "Roxie", the woman who the watch belonged to, is dead. And not from natural causes.

Digging a little deeper, Andrew makes his way to the halfway house his mother lived and worked in (and may also have been receiving treatment at) and discovers a little more about his parents, including the fact that there's a bulletin board in his mother's old room that hides a wall full of clippings about a series of murders that occured years before, including the killing of the young woman named Roxie.

Now, as Sherlock Holmes would say, the game's afoot. But Andrew isn't exactly the best possible detective there is ... mainly because he might be crazy. And he might have done some killing himself. He certainly manages to destroy his push-driven lawnmower, which is arguably the most important thing in the world to him, and he keeps seeing flashes of a woman who isn't really there.

If you're looking for a whodunit in the tradition of Dario Argento or Brian DePalma, then Stillwater is not the film for you, because by the end of the movie, one can't be sure what exactly was actually done. Maybe Andrew killed a woman. Maybe he killed a couple of other characters in the film as well (I'm going to keep their identities a secret in this review). And maybe he kills himself. Or maybe he's imagined it all. The film is ambiguous, and your reaction to it will depend entirely on how tolerant you are of its ambiguity. If you're up for it, it's certainly involving and will give you a lot to mull over.

Synapse Films has provided an anamorphic 1.78:1 transfer that highlights the color work of cinematographer Lyn Montcrief and captures the film's shadowy moments well. In fact, the cinematography is the film's most redeeming quality, imbuing it with a quality reminiscent of the work of Terence Malick (they mention a few films on the commentary track as influences, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the film I was most reminded of after watching this was Malick's film Badlands).

The commentary track, with Kays, Montcrief, and actor Hulse, is, like the film, kind of rambling and a little on the dry side. You don't get a notion that they would be a fun group of guys to hang around with. There's also a trailer, which is pretty typical, and a biography of the director, Adrian Kays, which after reading it makes you wonder why the trailer isn't more gripping (Kays' day job is cutting trailers for big budget studio films like Hulk).

When it was all over, I was reminded of a line from Trainspotting when the two junkies are discussing Lou Reed's more contemporary work. "Not bad ... but not good either, and in the end, it's just ..." well, I'll cut the quote there because it's a little too harsh to be used on the movie because it may not be that bad, I may just need to think about it a little more. The filmmakers certainly have talent, but the film ultimately left me a little cold.