PLOT: Super-creepy atmosphere distinguishes this drama about backwoods teen brothers fleeing their murderous uncle.

As movie experiences go, Undertow feels a bit like an endurance test. The film, a gothic American drama that combines coming-of-age and bloody murder, starts off with a frantic chase and never really stops careering around thereafter.

Chris (Jamie Bell) is a young man who lives with his sickly brother Tim (Devon Alan) and his father John (Dermot Mulroney) in some godforsaken farm in the swampy south. Where they are, exactly, is never made clear; this is not a story willing to help you get your bearings, expecially emotionally.

John is a pig farmer and a taxidermist, so there is no shortage of dead stuff, disturbing visuals or menace. Tim, the sickly brother, eats paint and the like and vomits regularly. When observed sniffing his books he explains, "I'm organizing my books by the way they smell."

It's Dickens-in-the-deep-South storytelling.

Into this peculiar but loving group comes Uncle Deel (Josh Lucas), dad's estranged brother. From the way he drives a car to the way he hacks up a roast pork at table, Deel exudes violence. Rage is his boon companion. He sows the seeds of family discontent and fights with everybody. Before long, Chris and Tim must run away from home.

Their journey puts them in contact with even more bizarre and potentially menacing characters. They attempt to make their own home together, away from the grim world of adults.

Part Night Of The Hunter and part Freaks, Undertow is an emotionally driven thriller about redemption and revenge that is unrelenting in its sense of gloom and doom. This is the sort of film in which everyone appears to need a toothbrush. Badly.

Visually gritty (and even, somehow, sweaty) and blessed with an astonishing score from Philip Glass, Undertow will make you very uncomfortable.

We mean that in the nicest way.

(This film is rated 14-A)

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