Release: Cedar Ridge

 

Cedar Ridge

Genre: Drama

Director: Derek Cianfrance

Writer: Joshua Collins

Cast: Lucas Hedges, Hailee Steinfeld, Spencer Treat Clark, Abigail Breslin, Josh Hamilton, Peyton List, Charlotte Ann Tucker, Lainey Jane Knowles

Budget: $23,000,000

Domestic Box Office: $19,049,195

Foreign Box Office: $12,895,135

Total Profit: -$14,889,441

Reaction: Writer Joshua Collins is 0-for-2 at the box office this season so far, but he will still have one more film due later this season in Round 9.

"Cedar Ridge hit me hard—it’s raw, grounded, and painfully honest in ways you don’t expect going in. Lucas Hedges gives maybe his best performance to date: it’s all in the silences, the little flinches, the half-smiles that crack just before they fade. The way the film explores mental health, false accusations, and broken trust feels both deeply personal and super relevant. Yeah, sure, Hailee Steinfeld is a bit underused, but she still brings this warm, older-sis (or cousin in this case) energy that totally works for the story. The plotting is subtle but impactful, and the emotional payoff in the final act—especially with the Anwen arc—is devastating and beautiful." - Zoe Navarro, Stream Screener Weekly

"The emotional blows in Cedar Ridge hit hard because they’re earned. There’s no melodrama here. Pure, crushing loneliness with just enough flicker of hope to make it through the next scene." - James Tubbs Jr., Vice Magazine

"Cedar Ridge is the sort of intimate, emotionally overwrought family drama that once might have graced the screen in the 1970s, though its execution lacks the narrative economy of that era. Lucas Hedges, a capable young actor of pained expressions, does commendable work anchoring the film, though one wonders if the character’s brooding ever deepens into something beyond melancholic cliché. Hailee Steinfeld, a performer of notable charisma and talent, is oddly sidelined here—her character too often functioning as the grounding voice rather than a person of full dramatic weight. The film’s themes of familial misjudgment, redemption, and psychological anguish are earnest but occasionally veer into the maudlin. Director Derek Cianfrance steeps it all in amber-toned naturalism, but the result feels more like a therapy session than cinema." - Harold Fenwick, The Atlantic Review of Cinema and Society

Rated R for language, sexual content, violence, drug use, and heavy thematic material - including suicide and child abuse