Early in Gruz 200 a girl — who has ill-advisedly gotten into a car with her best friend’s boyfriend and driven to an illegal vodka distillery in the middle of nowhere with a creepy guy lurking outside who looks kind of like Putin — is told by an earthy, world-weary woman to go hide in a barn so she won’t end up getting raped by any of the creepy vodka distillers (spoiler alert: doesn’t work).  “No, I want to go home!” she whines. “You’ll be more careful who you take a ride with next time,” says the woman blankly.  This is the only funny moment (more of a ha! than a hahaha) moment in this movie, which Netflix describes as a “darkly hilarious political thriller.”

So yeah, it’s not hilarious, even darkly, and I guess it’s political in that everything-about-Russia-is-political way, or maybe in a the-personal-is-political way? Anyway, it’s one of those movies where the lead actress has a lot of screentime but not a lot of dialogue besides “AUUUUUGGHHHHHHHH!!! (devolves into sobbing)” so I guess that would lead me to classify it as ‘horror.’  I’m not really sure how to feel about this movie! It would be perfect Halloween viewing, though.