Somewhere in Cornwall, on the stormy southwest coast of England, there's a village where people have lost track of time. It's not much of a place, hardly worthy of a name; but once things were different here. Once the surrounding waters were thick with fish and the people prospered. The local pub was filled with dancing and laughter. It wasn't so long ago, really.

Today things are different. Today, the village streets are near-empty and the pub is home to solitary whisky-sippers. The harbor is a ruin of dry-docked boats, wheels of corroded cable, and abandoned tangles of line. A community food bank on one corner is the only up-to-date touch. What happened here?

Director Mark Jenkin, a Cornwall man himself, has investigated the modern decline of this ancient Celtic area before, in films like "Bait" (2019) and "Enys Men" (2022). Now, in "Rose of Nevada," he reaches back through the years to create an eerie, sci-fi-adjacent time-travel movie of subtle wonder, infused with a sense of otherworldly mystery and rich with the director's customary technical coups. It's a picture not a lot like any other.

It begins with a middle-aged man contemplating a boat, a small fishing trawler that's tied up at a harbor dock. The letters across its stern proclaim it the Rose of Nevada. "Jesus Christ," the man mutters under his breath. "She's back."

This man knows this boat, and so do many others, it turns out. Thirty years ago, the Rose of Nevada set out to sea in search of fish, and, along with its three-man crew, never returned. Now here it is again, mysteriously seaworthy and ready to set out across the water once more. Who brought it back? Who docked it? Whatever the case, the boat's reappearance is welcome news to Nick (George MacKay, of "1917"), a young man with a wife and child to support and, at the moment, no adequate way to do so. The return of the Rose also attracts the attention of a rootless young wanderer named Liam (Callum Turner, "Masters of the Air"). Liam is new in town and mainly in the market for female companionship; first, though, money must be made. So both Liam and Nick are onboard when the newly spruced-up Rose of Nevada chugs out of the harbor once again. Pretty quickly, things start getting strange, especially after Nick discovers a warning carved in a below-decks bedstead by an earlier passenger: "Get off the boat now."

Director Jenkin not only writes, directs and produces his pictures, he also shoots them — on a hand-cranked 16mm Bolex camera — and edits and scores them as well. So "Rose of Nevada" has a carefully curated analog look — the saturated colors of algae-smeared boat bottoms and battered Wellington boots on wet dock planks pulse with stylized life. Most ambitiously, though, Jenkin photographs his films as silent movies, without sound, and then weaves in all the missing clinks, clanks, birdcalls and dialogue (and almost subliminal music cues) in post-production. The thought of exerting so much unnecessary physical labor, instead of just ladling in a syrup of digital imagery, is in itself exhausting.

The pace of the movie is deliberate, allowing the images to soak into you; and the cramped aspect ratio Jenkin employs gives the scenes set in the boat's tiny galley, and in the icy hold where the men must gut and stack fish, a claustrophobic verite. As a storm gathers outside, Nick and Liam can only wonder where this uncanny journey will lead them in the end. Unlike them, by this point, we have a pretty good idea.

Photo courtesy of BFI