"Deadland," which premiered at SXSW, is a surreal father-son migration movie that will linger with you.By definition, the Texas borderlands are where one artificial nation bleeds—too often literally—into another. It’s a region where metaphorical walls between languages and cultures crumble while physical walls are breached and scaled, a space where a fictitious line is as real as family or hunger.
The film’s title appears and fades, and soon Waters encounters a Mexican man preparing to wade the Rio Grande. Waters tries to warn the migrant about the heavy current, but the man enters and is swept downriver. The agent finds him washed up dead, then zips him into a black body bag in the back of his garish green-and-white SUV. Later, as Waters is driving away from the scene of his grim find, a soft song is heard from the rear seat: “,” as the body bag slowly starts to unzip.
To reveal much more of the plot would be a disservice. Hints are sprinkled generously throughout the film, but the revelation they suggest is strange enough that—judging by the gasp among the audience at the premiere showing—the twist will land for most viewers. Suffice it to say, the film takes the long way to arrive at a satisfying father-son conclusion.