‘Rose Of Nevada’ review: George MacKay and Callum Turner star in Mark Jenkin’s atmospheric time-travel tale

Dir/scr: Mark Jenkin. UK. 2025. 114mins

For his third feature following Bait and Enys Men, the UK’s Mark Jenkin returns to the location and themes that have preoccupied his work and delivers more of the same. That’s no bad thing, particularly for fans of his atmospheric folk tales and, with its relatively straightforward narrative, this could be his most accessible prospect yet. A tale of Cornish fisherman who find themselves travelling back in time, it effectively combines familiar genre tropes with Jenkin’s unique visual style and a resonant message of community.

There’s a real sense that Jenkin is having some fun with this premise

Jenkin’s 2019 debut Bait, about a beleaguered Cornish fishing village, premiered at Berlin and went on to win a Bafta for outstanding debut. His follow-up, the 1970s-set Cornish thriller Enys Men, which played Cannes Directors Fortnight, moved more towards horror and now Rose Of Nevada, which bows in Venice Horizons before playing Toronto, continues in that same vein. The narrative hits familiar genre beats and that, together with the casting of Brit stars George Mackay (1917, The End) and Callum Turner (The Boys In The Boat, the upcoming Eternity), could help expand Jenkin’s audience.

As is his wont, Jenkin (who also serves as cinematographer and editor) sets up his story like a jigsaw of briskly edited vignettes that viewers must attempt to piece together. A man and a woman discuss what to do about a strange boat in the harbour, the titular Rose Of Nevada. A family man attempts to patch up his crumbling house. A stranger arrives in the village. These oblique sequences are peppered with close-ups of rusting metal and decaying boats, evidence of a place in serious decline.

That place is a once thriving Cornish coastal village, the fishing industry having eroded to such a degree that most of the remaining inhabitants are forced to rely on the local food bank. Soon, it transpires that the Rose Of Nevada has mysteriously reappeared after sinking 30 years previously, with all hands lost. Fisherman Mike (Bait star Edward Rowe) believes, against all obvious logic, that the return of the boat is a good omen, and plans to crew her up and send her out.

There’s a real sense that Jenkin is having some fun with this premise, leaning into its slightly hokey genre elements. There’s a white-haired crone dolling out warnings, an ominous message scratched into wood. Cheekily, at one point 1980s psychological horror The Dead Zone plays on a TV. Shooting again in grainy 16mm on old wind-up Bolex cameras, with a claustrophobic, boxy aspect ratio, Jenkin has created a textured, timeless piece that, at times, pleasingly recalls 1970s supernatural TV dramas. Again, he’s created all sound and dialogue in post, which lends the film a fittingly disjointed, uncanny quality.

That sound design really comes to the fore when the boat sets sail, crewed by salty captain Murgey (Francis Magee), softly-spoken family man Nick (Mackay) and brash out-of-towner Liam (Turner who, like Mackay, is a former Screen Star Of Tomorrow). The grating of the winches, the screeching of the gulls, it’s all turned up to near-uncomfortable levels; sometimes the boat seems to scream through the water. On board, the repetitive nature of this traditional manual labour – fishing, gutting, packing – becomes almost hypnotic. But when the trio return to shore, their hull groaning with catch, Nick and Liam are shocked to discover that they have returned to 1993, and the town is once again full of life and vibrant colour.

They are also mistaken for other men; people believe Liam to be Alan, who went down with the original Rose, while Nick seems to have assumed the identity of Luke, whose guilt over leaving the Rose crew short-handed led him to commit suicide. (That event destroyed Luke’s mother (Mary Woodvine) who, 30 years on, becomes that white-haired crone.) While Nick is desperate to get home, Liam seems more sanguine – particularly when he gets involved with Alan’s wife Tina (Slow Horses star Rosalind Eleazar) and young daughter.

The strong cast all understand what Jenkin expects; there’s a deliberateness in the performances that sometimes swings towards melodrama – only Turner is notably more natural and relaxed as outsider Liam – but that’s exactly the right vibe here. Mackay is the emotional heart of the story, sympathetic as a man who has found himself in an impossible situation and only wants to get back to normal. But Nick’s normal may come at the detriment of an entire community, and his slow acceptance of that fact becomes the film’s real journey.