“Dredge” By Zach Closs
Three desperate women cross paths on a maddeningly humid afternoon in suburbia: Cora (Sarah Reny), whose ill-fated real estate venture is failing to launder drug money; Ana (Pamela Estrada), a landscape architect grooming Cora's property to support her ailing mother; and Devin (Erica Hill), a Jehovah's Witness in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I was landscaping and completely broke when I wrote “Dredge.” On high end properties, clients would often follow and watch me as I worked, waiting for any kind of mistake so they could talk down the price with my boss. That weird anxiety over yard work, along with my own suspicions about what someone had to do to own properties so expensive and beautiful, translated into the suspense and paranoia that’s key to the story.
As a city-dweller, I’ve always found myself strangely uncomfortable in quiet, “innocuous” suburbia, which seemed an unlikely but interesting setting for a film about class, and the simmering threat of sudden violence. Ana and Cora, respectively the free agent and the corporate goon, are both desperate; they’re hungry, overworked, and underpaid. That desperation boils over on a maddeningly humid day. How long ago in our evolution as a species would a freshly killed animal look appetizing? And, in our unsustainable world, how long until we might be pushed to the edge in surprising ways?
Zach Closs - Director
Credits
Cast: Pamela Estrada, Sarah Reny, Erica Hill & Ted Powers
Writer/Director: Zach Closs
Producer: Joe Craib
Production: Wild Flicks, Start The Picture
Cinematography: Steven McDonnell
Editor: Nick Brooks
Composer: Jordan Shew
Makeup & Prosthetics: Natalia Andrea Pozo & Daniella Pluchino
Production Design: Michael Au
1st AC: Alicia Baggieri
Sound Recordist: Siyu Han
Post Sound, ADR, Mixing: Jordan Shew
Sound Editor: Jerm van Leeuwen
Colourist: Erik Bayley
VFX: Nick Brooks
Post Consultant: Jordan Dawson
Swing: Kurtis Watson
PA: Harriet Bramwell
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