Movie Thoughts: Scapegoats (2023)

• Released: November 22, 2023
• Directed by: Rock Grispen
  
• Running time: 1 h 32 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

During the eighteenth century, the south of the Netherlands is haunted by criminal gangs known as the Buckriders. Two men, Paul Penris and Jan Clercx, set out on bringing justice to these Buckriders. But all is not what it seems, and it turns out Clercx might have some personal demons to fight as well.

My Thoughts

If you know me well enough you'll know I'm rather interested in the Dutch Buckriders history, having read several books on it. It did happen for real and unfortunately led to a lot of innocent people being tortured and killed in what were basically just another form of witchhunts. 

This movie, based on reality and some real people from the time, showcases the hard times of the Buckrider trials pretty well. Not just how it's leading to a lot of uncertainty for the poor villagers (who might be accused of being a Buckrider at any moment), but also for Pendris who is finding it more and more difficult to keep up with his job, especially as the tortures of the supposed Buckriders turn increasingly extreme under Clercx' watchful eye. It was an interesting dynamic. 

I also found it an interesting take that despite Clercx being highly religious and seeing these Buckriders as pawns of the Devil, he himself is far from perfect either, though this is probably fed by his delusions of seeing the Devil everywhere. Pendris was also a good character and probably my favorite in the movie, together with his wife Mia. Both are two inquisitors who have fallen out of faith, but they do believe in justice, but of course over the course of the movie they realize that Clercx might be the biggest problem they're dealing with right now. They had a really interesting, well-written dynamic. I'm honestly just so sad that both the Pendrises ended up dying and Clercx pretty much just got away with it. 

For some flaws: One, the accents. This movie made the pretty admirable choice to actually have the characters speak old Dutch reminiscent of the time when this took place. Which is a choice I like...if they had gone all the way with it. Because sadly not every character seems to have this. Some have such thick accents that you can hardly hear what they're saying, while others speak what is basically very close to modern AN (sometimes with a modern Limburg accent). Which just kind of ruins the effect they were going for. How cool would it have been if this entire movie had been in this old Dutch language? We have subtitles anyways, so it's not like we need to be able to understand what every character is saying. But especially for our main characters they're very easily understandable to a modern audience to the point they almost feel like they don't belong in the movie, with how much their more modern accents stand out.

Second: The structure. This movie's structure is just kind of...weird. It doesn't follow a real three-act structure, which is fine to me. A story doesn't need to follow a certain formula to be good. But the way they executed it here just felt a bit lopsided. It's mostly just scene by scene of the plot playing out (with several highs and several lows) with no real sense of a climax or anything, and then the movie just ends. There's not even what I'd call a definitive ending, the movie just kind of stops after a while. Not saying this couldn't have worked as a movie with a less traditional structure, but the execution just felt a bit awkward and especially the out-of-nowhere ending was a bit off-putting. I just feel that the way the plot was structured could've been handled better, even if it doesn't follow the standard three-act structure. 

Overall a decent film though, not perfect and a bit low-budget, but I can tell they clearly cared about making it. I just wish they had been a bit more consistent with the accents and the plot had been restructured to be a little less wonky.