Union County (2026)

Union County Review: A Quiet Portrait of Recovery in Rural Ohio

Union County arrives with a premise that feels both timely and deeply specific: a county-mandated drug court program in the heart of opioid-ravaged rural Ohio. Writer-director Adam Meeks, making his feature debut, chooses restraint over melodrama, and for long stretches that choice pays off. The film follows Cody Parsons (Will Poulter), a man whose addiction has cost him nearly everything, as he navigates the bureaucratic and emotional gauntlet of a system designed to offer second chances — if you can survive its conditions.

Direction and Atmosphere

Meeks directs with a documentarian's eye for texture. The film's 97-minute runtime is lean, almost to a fault, and the pacing mirrors the slow, non-linear grind of recovery itself. Cinematography favors muted palettes and handheld intimacy, placing us in courtrooms, sparse apartments, and the wide, indifferent Ohio landscape. There's no score to manipulate emotion — just the hum of fluorescent lights, the scrape of chairs, the silence between difficult conversations. It's effective, though occasionally the austerity feels like a budget constraint rather than an aesthetic choice.

Performances: Poulter Anchors a Strong Ensemble

Will Poulter delivers the kind of lived-in, vanity-free performance that reminds you why he's one of his generation's most reliable actors. Cody isn't a saint or a monster; he's a man whose body and mind have been rewired by dependency, and Poulter captures the physical toll — the tremors, the exhaustion, the flash of shame behind a joke — without ever begging for sympathy. Noah Centineo, as Jack, a peer mentor with his own complicated sobriety, provides a necessary counterweight: warmer, more verbal, but carrying his own fractures. Elise Kibler and Emily Meade round out the central quartet as women in Cody's orbit — a caseworker and an ex-partner — both written with enough specificity to avoid "supporting girlfriend" tropes, though the script gives them less interiority than the men.

Story and Structural Choices

The narrative unfolds in episodic beats: a failed drug test, a job interview, a hearing, a relapse, a small victory. This verisimilitude is the film's strength and its limitation. By refusing dramatic arcs — no climactic confrontation, no redemption speech — Union County honors the reality that recovery is a series of daily decisions, not a movie moment. But the absence of narrative propulsion can make the middle act feel circular. A subplot involving a judge (Kevin P. Braig, playing a version of himself) and the drug court's institutional logic is intriguing but under-explored; the film hints at systemic contradictions — treatment as punishment, care as surveillance — without fully engaging them.

Who Will Connect With This Film

Viewers seeking a visceral, unvarnished look at addiction and the systems built around it will find much to respect. Those expecting a conventional redemption arc or emotional catharsis may leave frustrated. The film's refusal to sensationalize is its integrity — and its commercial risk.