A young African American man, reeling from the tragic loss of his wife, travels to rural Maine to seek answers from his cancer-stricken, estranged mother-in-law (Dianne Wiest).
Curran guides the cast to commendable performances across the board, with Oyelowo and Wiest delivering controlled, nuanced work to fill in the script's generous negative space.
Curran's deliberate pace captures the quietness of the setting of Five Nights in Maine, but the thinness of her script is what makes the film feel sluggish.
The dialogue is minimalistic, and most of it courtesy of Lucinda's cruel taunts that cut like a knife. But even those moments are never fully explored.
