The Mystery of the Disappearing Pets in Kevin Tran's 2020 Debut The Dark End of the Street

THE DARK END OF THE STREET

(Kevin Tran, 2020, USA, 70 minutes)

Kevin Tran's first feature centers on the diverse inhabitants of an ordinary-looking New York suburb. They're all pretty disconnected from each other until some of their pets turn up dead. 

It begins and ends with Isaac (Michael Cyril Creighton, High Maintenance), a social studies teacher out walking his dog on a cloudy day before moving on to Marney (Brooke Bloom, She's Lost Control), a single woman who arrives home from the grocery store to find her back door open and her cat, Bruce, lying in a pool of blood (this death is implied rather than shown). 

Her neighbors, a young couple newly arrived from the city, are expecting a baby. While Patty (Lindsay Burdge) works as a substitute teacher, Jimmy (Scott Friend), a freelance film editor, makes plans to get together with Richard (Jim Parrack, True Blood), a new friend he met in a bar. Richard, a technophobe, recently lost his job, and doesn't seem too put out about it.

Another couple, Sue (Jennifer Kim, She Dies Tomorrow) and Keith (Daniel K. Isaac) prepares for dinner while their daughter, Natalie (Kasey Lee), brings her pet bird, Polly, in for the night. A few houses away, three teens spend the evening skateboarding, eating instant noodles, and playing video games. One has a small dog. Another spends the night jamming in a basement with his hardcore band.

Though Tran identifies the cat killer early on, he withholds their reasons for doing the evil deed. As word spreads through the community, people make an effort to look after each other and to keep an eye on their animals. 

Ian (Anthony Chisholm, Oz), an older widower who lives across the street from Marney, stops by with some beers to cheer her up. Jimmy, meanwhile, in a low-key thriller move, walks home from Richard's house in the dark, an unfortunate idea since he's drunk and doesn't really know the area. 

The ending implies that no more pets are likely to die, but the killer's motive remains a mystery. It's an open question as to whether the threat brought the community closer together, but now they're certainly more aware of each other. Tran seems to be suggesting that it shouldn't take a tragedy for people to express interest in their neighbors and to look in on those, like the elderly, who are the most vulnerable.

Some of his ideas don't feel fully developed, but for the most part, the film plays like a series of short stories or plays in which fears of a pet killer serve more as a connective device than as a subject or plot point. If it doesn't all work, the sheer number of characters represents an ambitious undertaking for a debut director. I'm interested to see what he does next.

The Dark End of the Street is available on home video via Gravitas Ventures, on several pay operators, and on free streaming services, including Tubi, The Roku Channel, Plex, and Vudu. Images from Gravitas Ventures.