Chappaquiddick

Chappaquiddick (2018) is a political drama directed by John Curran — watch it online on iFILM. Jason Clarke plays Ted Kennedy in a film that reconstructs the days following the July 1969 car accident on Chappaquiddick Island that killed campaign strategist Mary Jo Kopechne, played by Kate Mara. Ed Helms and Bruce Dern round out the central cast.

Ted drives off a bridge. The passenger dies. He gets out of the water. Then he waits nearly ten hours before contacting the police. The film is largely about those ten hours and the days after — the advisers called in overnight, the carefully worded public statement, the legal maneuvering conducted under the shelter of one of American politics' most powerful surnames. Director Curran and screenwriters Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan don't try to resolve the moral question; they reconstruct the mechanism.

Clarke plays Kennedy without softening him or turning him into a clean villain — the performance sits in the difficult middle, a man shaped entirely by a family name making the choice that name made possible. For a film built around a single documented incident, it manages to feel genuinely unsettling all the way through. Stream Chappaquiddick (2018) online on iFILM.