The Driftless Area

Pierre, a college graduate turned bartender, returns to his hometown in the Driftless Area after the death of his parents. On a hitchhiking return trip, he is picked up by Shane, who drives with a swagger and a rosebush tucked in the back. Shane charges him $20 for the ride and then dumps him further down the road, stealing the rosebush in the process. In a moment of frustration, [Pierre] digs a rock from his pocket and hurls it at the car, a reckless act that sends Shane careening off the next curve. When Pierre investigates the wreck, he discovers a bag containing a staggering $77,000 in Shane’s pickup. He surmises that the money was meant for someone else—specifically a woman who had once given him the rock, a woman who needed plastic surgery to repair a badly scarred face and had hinted that such a procedure could be possible “if she ever found a pile of money.” This windfall becomes a tangled thread of fate for him, drawing him toward a new, dangerous path.

Meanwhile, Shane comes to and, in a desperate bid to escape, steals a car from a kind passerby who stops to help him. The money, however, tugs at Pierre in a different way. While wandering through a field, Pierre falls into a deep well and is saved by Stella, a ghost who lingers near the living world. Grateful for the rescue, he grows to feel a deep, complicated affection for her, even as he recognizes that she is not of the living. The late [Stella] is a spirit who seems to carry the heavy weight of a life cut short, and her presence becomes a quiet center of the film’s emotional gravity. A veteran named Tim Geer steps in to help Stella cope with her spectral existence and seek retribution for a life unjustly taken.

As the story unfolds, Shane, his brother Ned and their ally Lyle return to reclaim the money. Pierre, steering the course of events with a wary intelligence, leads the trio into a trap. A fatal disagreement erupts during the confrontation, and [Shane] shoots Lyle through the heart. In the ensuing chaos, Shane and Pierre kill each other in a tense shootout. As Shane dies, Stella appears to him, questioning the killing and offering a quiet, otherworldly solace. Pierre faces his own mortality, having written a will that leaves his car to his friend Carrie, his grey felt hat to Keith, and his binoculars to Stella, signaling the care he carries for the people and beings around him.

With the violence behind him, Pierre awakens not to a graveyard but to a bright beach, where he is greeted by Stella. She explains that their time together is just beginning, echoing a shared wish he had held close: a future where they could spend a long, unhurried life together. The Driftless Area’s quiet landscape still hums with its own mystery, but in this revised, post-crisis moment, the living and the dead share a tender, unresolved hope. The narrative lingers on the contrast between desire and consequence, the weight of choices made in a moment, and the strange, luminous possibility of what comes after.

Last Updated: October 03, 2025 at 06:46