A new Maine-shot, Maine-set film premieres on Amazon Prime this Friday — just as the country hunkers down for unprecedented levels of binge-watching.
“Blow The Man Down” was filmed in 2018 in and around the Cumberland County town of Harpswell, and tells the story of dark secrets of a fictional coastal town in Maine called Easter Cove. It was written and directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy, two filmmakers who in 2015 founded the Los Angeles-based all-female film collective, RIP Dora.
“Blow The Man Down,” which premiered in April 2019 at the Tribeca Film Festival to rave reviews and was nominated for a 2020 Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay, is equal parts crime drama, mystery and black comedy. It focuses on two sisters, Maribeth (Morgan Saylor) and Priscilla (Sophie Lowe), whose mother suddenly dies, leaving unpaid bills on her house and unanswered questions about a criminal enterprise their mother secretly operated with her friend, Enid (Margo Martindale, “Justified,” “The Americans”).
Easter Cove begins to unravel as other women in the town (June Squibb, Annette O’Toole and Marceline Hugot) seek to take Enid down, and it becomes clear that it’s not the fishermen who run the coastal village — it’s the tough-talking women who hold the real power.
The movie was filmed in Harpswell during the winter of 2018, during bitterly cold weather and snowstorms that serve as the backdrop to Cole and Krudy’s smart, engaging, salty tale. While neither Cole nor Krudy grew up in Maine, their version of a coastal town rings relatively true — the dry humor, the hardworking townsfolk and the secrets that lay hidden beneath the surface.
“Blow The Man Down” premieres on Amazon Prime on March 20.
