All Creatures Here Below

Gensan and Ruby are a young couple living hand to mouth on his job in fast food, while her diminished mental capacity makes it difficult to hold a job. Ruby wants a baby, but Gensan will only have anal sex with her when they don’t have condoms.

When his restaurant is permanently closed, Gensan gambles on a backyard cockfight, then murders the man who won’t make good on the bet. That same day, Ruby has taken a neighbor’s baby, adding further complications when Gensan steals the dead man’s car and picks her up to flee Los Angeles. The impromptu family slowly drives cross country on secondary highways, with Gensan working to keep Ruby from accidentally killing the baby, while also trying to avoid either of them being arrested for their major crimes.

They take U.S. Route 54 to reach their childhood home in De Soto, Kansas, revealing that they are brother and sister. Their Uncle Doug tells Gensan that his pedophile brother-in-law died in prison, leaving nothing but an old shack to Gensan and Ruby. Uncle Doug believes he has convinced Gensan that their only chance is to turn themselves in for the kidnapping, returning the baby (who Ruby has named Irene) to its mother, getting Ruby care in a facility of some type, with Gensan likely to get a short prison term, having come forward.

Gensan tells his Uncle Doug that he will retrieve Ruby and the baby and turn himself in at Doug’s house. When Gensan returns to the motel where they are staying, he discovers that Ruby accidentally smothered the baby when trying to keep her quiet, believing the police were at the door. While Doug and the police are waiting, Gensan takes Ruby to a rural field where they had played as children, and kills her. As he finishes burying “mother and daughter” together, sirens are heard approaching.

• David Dastmalchian as Gensan
• Karen Gillan as Ruby
• David Koechner as Robert
• Jennifer Morrison as Penny
• Richard Cabral as Hugo
• John Doe as Uncle Doug

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 74% based on 19 reviews, and an average rating of 6.94/10.[4]

Dennis Harvey of Variety wrote, "Schiffli directs with a nice balance between momentum and naturalism. Yet the creditable handling can’t quite mask material that feels inorganically rooted in secondhand dramatic clichés."[5]Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times wrote, "A movie about calamitous choices and the constraints that shape them, “Creatures” places its leads in one moral trap after another. Despite this, the actors miraculously keep us on their side — until, finally, they can’t."[6]Katie Walsh of The Los Angeles Times wrote, "The story takes some unbelievably tragic twists and turns, and along the way, Dastmalchian unfolds a riveting performance, aided by Schiffli’s beautiful and unobtrusive style."[7]

• All Creatures Here Below on IMDb