Capsized

Bluesky

Children, animals, and boats. They're three things film-makers are warned about and with good reason. Their presence, and in such quantities, make Capsized's achievements all the more impressive in a debut feature. That they've been navigated with such aplomb makes it slightly disappointing that Lindsey Ryan's film doesn't quite work. It's not that it founders, indeed it sets a course with at least as much certainty as The Odyssey, though with a more uncertain outcome in return. It's more that it's so loaded with elements that it is left unbalanced, and so becomes aptly named.

Rhys Ifans plays Ray, patriarch of an American-Irish clan and with an accent that's only somewhat more reliable than his character. Long-suffering wife Diane (Lily Rabe) just about keeps things together as she and their five children join him on a family holiday. All aboard 'Ship Happens' as fate, and paperwork, catch-up with them. Bearing the brunt of consequences is Nicole (Sarah Catherine Hook), far more focussed on outcomes than her jock-twin Pat (Griffin Gluck). Younger siblings Maeve (Ada Bland), Jack (Eli Goss), and Ellie (a scene-stealing Joan Stein) are more insulated from goings-on, in part because of Nicole's efforts. The market's taken a downturn, or finances were over-extended, or an investment didn't come through, or the baited hook wasn't bit, or something.

It's the trailing lines that are Capsized's other strength, and also perhaps its undoing. Years of film have taught audiences to look for outcomes from fishing competitions or club membership or academic offers or dive-knives in the galley or any of the various things Chekhov would have up on the mantelpiece. Except, as Capsized is willing to point out, sometimes stuff is up there because you put it down while looking for something else and now you're looking for two things.

That knottiness, the untidiness of real life, is what makes Capsized work when it does. There are some great performances from the kids, and the technical aspects of shooting afloat are well handled. Premiering at the 2026 Edinburgh Film Festival it got a good audience reaction, buoyed in part by the number of the cast and crew that had made it over. It would be reductive to say it was the offspring of Uncut Gems and Big Fish, but reduction is perhaps what Capsized is most in need of.

During the post-première question and answer session writer/director Lindsey Ryan explained some of the challenges of the film. With its origin in "all the things she liked" and parallels with her own life, growing up as one of five, there is definitely the personal and personality in what she described as "a character study of a family". The presence of those three central challenges was, she admitted, "incredibly ambitious", but joked that getting producers involved would have been made simpler by making the script a drinking game. If every time they read the word 'fucking' they took a shot they'd be too much of a mess not to agree. It's that ingredient in her "perfect alchemy of things" that further unsettles Capsized. As a family dramedy with a key character who becomes "harder and harder to root for" even in places where patriarchal power serves to excuse a lot of that behaviour its difficulty makes it difficult.

For all that it does on the water, its various substitutions including reskinning West Virginia as Maryland, it doesn't quite manage to smuggle its magic through. While the cast (and an arm-cast young Joan described as being as comfortable as "a bunch of mosquitos" [in a] "burlap sack") are carrying a lot, hearts are very much on sleeves. That it's as willing to subvert expectations is a strength but it doesn't quite play those cards right, and when it does pull out what it hopes are surprises it feels, to use the term from magic, a little forced. That there's as much salty language is one of several accuracies but it makes it harder as older audiences will know all to well that, even in movies, life isn't always like the movies.

In that Q&A a question was asked about the use of Glen Campbell's Rhinestone Cowboy, and Ryan explained that she'd basically used all that had been budgeted for music licensing on a "one and done". It's a good moment in the film, and it's that it happens to cause a continuity issue where a boat is both cruising and not that is probably the root of my issues with Capsized. To get so much right, and to not quite connect, is a shame. It's a valiant effort, but to borrow from baseball it's a swing and a miss.

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