Rebel Ridge Cured my Hangover

I didn’t have Netflix for over a year. The plan was simple: rotate between streaming services, save a little money, feel a little smug. After a while, I didn’t need it or miss it. I told myself I was being smart, intentional, in control.

During my time away from Netflix, I had to find another way to spend man hours a day staring at a screen. One of the solutions I found was the endless genre of "expert reacts" videos on YouTube. I love them. I trick myself into thinking I'm learning something when in reality I'm just stuffing my brain full of dopamine. I’ve watched gamblers analyze poker scenes, herpetologists examine the veracity of Snakes on a Plane, and volcanologists break down lava physics in disaster movies. Easy, bite-size entertainment. Something I can control.

Recently, I was deep into one of those reaction videos when a new clip popped up. A SEAL influencer/youtuber watching a clip from a movie. In it, this mountain of a man stands alone in some rural parking lot. He's extremely calm, in control, as a cop approaches him, the cop's armed. They exchange a few words, and the cop tries to pull his gun on the man, but he grabs it. What happens next is a perfectly executed series of takedowns and throws. No flashy kills, no absurd slow motion. Just smooth, efficient violence.

The man disarms the first cop, then uses him as a shield to approach the second cop. He disarms the second one, goes back to the first. A ping pong of violence. And the man is always in control, going back and forth between targets.

The SEAL dude gave it a 5/10 for realism, but I didn’t care. What struck me was how the actor, Aaron Pierre, owned the scene first with dialogue and body language, then with action. I was tense and anxious, even when it was only a clip and I didn't have any context.

Two weeks later, I'm mummified on a Sunday morning. A terrible hangover. I'm back on Netflix, scrolling around, just trying to keep my brain from spilling out of my skull. And there it was, the guy from the clip. The runtime said a little over two hours, definitely not how I wanted to spend my Sunday morning with a hangover. But that clip, man. I just had to. I decided to watch Rebel Ridge.

The first thing I noticed was that Jeremy Saulnier directed it. He's great and Blue Ruin is a certified banger, so I was pretty sure this was going to be a violent, graphic film. Remember that scene in Green Room where they cut open a guy with a box cutter? That's how my brain felt, and, for some reason, it craved more of that.

Gatorade on one hand, blanket on the other, I pressed play. The opening sequence was enough to convince me.

Terry (Aaron Pierre) is riding his bike when a cop car swerves and knocks into him. Guns come out. He’s cuffed on the spot. You know how this could go, you’ve seen enough headlines to fill in the blanks. But then it doesn’t. The cops calm down, they’re almost polite about it. Turns out it’s just a traffic violation. He didn’t stop when they flashed their lights. Nothing major.

Then comes the twist: they ask about the cash he’s carrying, 30 thousand dollars, the money he brought to bail out his cousin. Just like that, the cops take it. Civil forfeiture they call it, totally legal. There is no fight, barely even some yelling, just paperwork and a receipt. But you know, under all that, everything could change in a second. The tension is always present in the film, in every interaction.

After that, everything slowly escalates. Terry tries to get his money back, but is denied. His cousin goes to jail and ends up dead. Even then, when Terry has all the moral justification to go berserk on the corrupt cops, he backs down. He tries to leave, but is always pulled back in. It's like violence seeks him out, not the other way around. In the end, it finds him.

Throughout the movie, you keep expecting that revenge fantasy satisfaction. Everything must be bigger, louder, bloodier. Rebel Ridge follows that blueprint, but it has a slightly different approach. Most thrillers build tension so they can release it. This one builds tension so it can hold it. After every injustice Terry goes through, you’re waiting for him to explode, to lose control. But he doesn't.

He's got that particular set of skills like Liam Neeson. He's got the perfect antagonist to release his fury upon. He’s the kind of guy who could easily be turned into an action-hero cliché. But the movie never treats him that way.

He holds back constantly. Even his particular brand of violence is based on control. Wrist locks, Brazilian jiu-jitsu wizardry, immobilizing. That restraint is rare in movies like this. That’s why it hit so hard on a day when I felt completely out of it. Even though Terry has every reason to snap, he keeps it together. Watching someone do that, when I could barely get off the couch, felt inspirational.

There’s something profound about watching a man who could wreck a room but chooses not to. From the first moment we see Terry, it's clear he wants to follow the rules. He’s looking for answers, not vengeance. But the more he tries to follow the rules, the more the system pushes back. He stays in control, even as the system does everything it can to break him.

Hangovers have a way of stripping you down to the barest version of yourself. They leave you exposed. Every sound is too sharp, every light too bright. You’re hypersensitive. Every decision is heavier than it should be. You’re not in fight-or-flight mode. You’re in freeze-and-flinch. You're not in control of anything.

Then a movie like Rebel Ridge shows up. And it isn’t a power fantasy, it’s a control fantasy. When you’re in that hungover limbo, when your own grip on things feels loose, watching someone not spiral, even when they have every reason to, feels comforting.

That’s why Rebel Ridge felt perfect on a fragile Sunday morning. Because it showed composure. It reminded me what it looks like to stay calm under pressure, to be in control when everything seems against you.

If Netflix keeps making movies like Rebel Ridge, I’ll keep paying for Netflix. Simple as that. It’s smart, tense, beautifully choreographed, and doesn’t waste your time. Also, it made my hangover feel a little less terrible.