Sundown

Sundown is a 2021 drama film written and directed by Michel Franco, a co-production between Mexico, France and Sweden that premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It stars Tim Roth and Charlotte Gainsbourg as members of a wealthy British family whose Acapulco holiday is cut short by a death at home — and Roth’s Neil, claiming at the airport to have left his passport behind, lets the others fly without him and drifts back into the town as violence circles the edges of his inertia.

Restrained auteur cinema is the hardest place to put a visual effect, because the moment one is noticed the realism collapses. Films shot this way rely on invisible support: removal of crew, rigs, cables and unwanted signage from long observational takes; digital set dressing and sky or water replacement to hold continuity across shifting coastal light; and precise rotoscoping so that the film’s sudden, unshowy bursts of violence can be finished with subtle blood and squib enhancement rather than spectacle. It is compositing craft above all — one of the disciplines Terminal FX works in, alongside FX simulation, environments and animation, and the studio contributed visual effects and animation to Sundown as part of its film, television and commercial portfolio.