Cruel to Be Kind

LIKE THE ORIGINAL MASTER OF SUSPENSE (AND SADISM), ALFRED HITCHCOCK, Jeremy Saulnier delights in toying with the everyman, consistently placing his characters in precarious positions well outside their safety zones. His debut feature, (2007), trails a dorky loner, Christopher, to a Halloween get-together he randomly finds an invite to, unaware that he will end up the prey of attention- and blood-hungry Williamsburg hipster artists who plan to slaughter someone in the name of their vocation. In his sensational followup, (2013), Dwight, an unkempt, peaceful recluse, feels it’s his honorable duty to seek vengeance when he hears the news that the man who was imprisoned for killing his parents 20 years earlier is being released. And (2015) sees