I'm a big fan of single-location mystery/thrillers. They have produced some of my favourite movies in fact over the years. There's just something about them. I think it stems down to the fact that the director doesn't have the variety in locations to drive his movie, so he has to use the story and dialogue to carry things. Give me that any day of the week. 'The Standoff at Sparrow Creek' won't go down in the category of greats, but it's a pretty solid effort from a debut filmmaker.
The film is very dark for a large majority of the runtime. It can be quite difficult to tell what exactly is going on at certain points. There's a decent sized cast for a clearly low-budget film. Some of the characters are really interesting, others not so much. The interesting ones luckily have the most screen time and carry the weaker ones when they share a scene.
There are some really strong lines of dialogue in this movie too. Some of them caught me off-guard by just how thought-provoking they were. They film does sometimes struggle to justify its already short runtime and it feels like things are being stretched out just a little at times. All in all though I had a good time with 'The Standoff at Sparrow Creek' and if this is where writer/director Henry Dunham is starting his career then the sky is the limit.
