Bucking Fastard
Written by Cameron Geiser
Warning: This review is for Bucking Fastard, which is a film presented at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. There may be slight spoilers present. Reader discretion is advised.
Image courtesy of the Toronto International film Festival.
Not every film is for everyone, and while Werner Herzog is indeed a legendary filmmaker who has made this film dedicated to David Lynch, a filmmaker whose work I adored, Bucking Fastard was not for me. The film begins with our co-leads, Joanie and Jeannie Holbrooke (played by real-life sisters Kate Mara and Rooney Mara) as two sisters speaking in unison about a dream they shared about birds. Initially this was a promising start. Several tenets of David Lynch’s work were already present and accounted for. Doubles, musings about dreams, and the way both characters speak at the same time with the same intention does give the film an uncanny cadence to its flow. However, with a few exceptions of comic genius seemingly out of left field in the first half of the film, this was in my opinion the least of Herzog’s work both in fiction and non-fiction.
The film begins with a courtroom trial about a man seeking a restraining order against the sisters. The sisters take the stand together and begin to tell their tale of unrequited love. What initially began as a sexual tryst between the three of them as neighbors quickly turned sour once Gareth Mulroney (Orlando Bloom) had moved on and began dating another woman he eventually married. This did not go as he planned as the Holbrooke sisters had become completely obsessed and totally devoted to him, never once giving up on their one sided passion. After they try to derail Mulroney’s marriage with several nonsensical and childish attempts at subterfuge, like burning down his local mailbox so that he could no longer write love letters to his wife, the trial eventually ends with the restraining order moving forward. The sisters end up moving across town thanks to a kindly older gentleman feeling bad for their predicament as they had been lambasted on the local news.
The last half of the film is devoted to the sisters moving out to the Irish countryside to live with their aunt and help her out around the house and property. It isn’t long before they discover some empty caverns in a mountain nearby where they hear of a local myth about a man who had tried, and failed, to dig and tunnel his way through and under the mountain to a far off series of islands. They become dialed in on this idea and spend years digging until they find a tourism industry in an elaborate cave system. This portion of the film is painfully languid and I know that David Lynch’s films may feel similarly confounding at times, but his always at least seemed to follow some unsettling and emotional or terrifyingly magical throughline. Here nothing makes sense, the pacing is abysmal, the characters have nothing truly interesting about them except that they are unable to do things apart and must act as a pair forever. The story becomes aimless and frankly uninteresting.
It doesn’t feel good to score a legend so low, but I have to be honest here and say that Bucking Fastard was a misfire. The Mara sisters do put in the work for an interesting performance experiment but the shtick isn’t interesting for long and the uncanny nature of how they speak, act, and carry themselves gets old very quickly. Nothing against all the talent involved but I cannot in good conscience recommend this film. However, if you saw and enjoyed it, hats off to you, but I will not be revisiting this film.
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.