Mark Pellegrino in Bad Turn Worse (Facebook)

Bad Turn Worse begins with an act of great hubris when a character quotes the great noir writer Jim Thompson on how to write a mystery. “There are thirty-two ways to tell a story but there’s only one plot.” And he is correct. The plot, in this case, isn’t something to write home about. Like many mysteries, it’s been told before. However, the way that the directors, brothers Zeke and Simon Hawkins, tell this story, the movie becomes something more substantial.

Three young folks, best friends since they were kids, ache to get out of their small Texas town. There’s the girl, Sue (a luminous Mackenzie Davis), the smart one and bound for college, biding her time working as a mechanic and devouring mystery novels like they were potato chips. Her boyfriend, B.J. (Logan Huffman), a local yahoo, grew up fatherless and knows that this is the first and last stop on the merry-go-round. He’s a lifer and alternately proud and ashamed of it. And finally there’s Bobby (Jeremy Allen White), the sweet, quiet, love-struck, puppy-eyed third wheel.

The brash and impulsive B.J. decides to take his buddies on a road trip to Corpus Christi with some money he’s saved up as a last hurrah before his buds go to college. And they have a great time, even as you see the cracks in the façade of their friendship. Under neon lights and enough alcohol, everyone’s willing to let sleights slide to the wayside.

On coming home, the trio is in for an unpleasant surprise. It turns out that the money B.J. saved up belongs to B.J. and Bobby’s boss, Giff (a genially perverse Mark Pellegrino), over at the cotton mill. And it’s gone. And Giff has found out. And he’s mighty unhappy because the money wasn’t his but his boss’s, a ruthless gangster. Plotwise, I’m going to stop there. Because it’s a lot of fun to see what teases out of that circumstance.

It takes place in South Texas and the Hawkins, along with cinematographer Jeff Bierman, capture the desolateness and the futility of the place quite nicely. No matter what time of day, it always seems like dusk. Wind turbines are more ubiquitous than human beings, and there are shots of them constantly spinning, echoing the futility of the character’s situation.

And, contrary to most noirs, there is no femme fatale, no tough guy. These are kids playacting. Their fears get mixed up with fake bravado and a nonchalance that barely hide their confusion. This helps to build the tension and inevitable tragedy as we watch young people who still have their baby fat stumble into a hornet’s nest of greed and depravity. They put on the bravest face they can as they transition into the unruly and dangerous world of adulthood.

If anything, Bad Turns Worse is reminiscent of the noirs of the mid-1980s to early ’90’s. Its peers are Blood Simple, Red Rocks West, and the minor masterpiece After Dark My Sweet (based on an actual Jim Thompson novel). Unlike those films, whose harsh, amoral characters resist sympathy, Bad Turns Worse has another motive: to break your heart. And in that, it succeeds admirably.