Scarlet Winter review – chopped-up narrative method decorates corpse-disposal thriller

Mulholland Drive and Memento are celebrated examples of how narrative fragmentation can dovetail well with the philosophical heart and aims of film noir. While this low-budget thriller doesn’t have the finesse of either of those films, it does at least aim high in its sundered viewpoint on the jealousy-filled menage à trois at its centre. Debut director Munjal Yagnik plays it entirely non-linear to begin with, before settling into a more conventional but still mobile flashback structure.

Mark (Gregory Waits) wakes up in disarray, quickly turning into despair when he walks into the bedroom to find (what we assume is) his partner dead on the bed. But the next scene reveals he has been playing away: his wife, Sidney (Nadine van Asbeck) returns home to find him frantically cleaning. Taking his sudden move to buy a new mattress as a sign he is still being unfaithful to her with lover Naomi (Sophie Moshofsky), she forces him to sign divorce papers. Not that his new relationship is going any better, as we next loop back to join him in the initial stages of corpse disposal immediately prior to Sidney walking through the door.

Mark leans on shady construction worker pal Richie (Ryan Hope Travis) to help him drive Naomi’s body to a snowy burial ground, with this grim mission interspersed with further flashbacks to his and Naomi’s halcyon hook up. But Scarlet Winter feels more like a logistical exercise in arranging these story shards than one that uses these angles to cast illuminating light on the characters. There’s nothing particularly compelling in what’s revealed about Naomi’s growing dissatisfaction as the other woman, and Mark doesn’t seem sufficiently disturbed by believing he is her murderer.

The film ratchets up the paranoia in a closing stretch that leads to a final twist – though even that is delivered ex machina for the viewers, without the protagonist himself cottoning on. Another example of how Yagnik’s film fails to locate a beating human heart underneath its frosty outer crust.

• Scarlet Winter is on digital platforms from 10 February.