Rating: D+
Dir: John David Moffat IV
Star: Wyatt Denny, Inja Zalta
(Eerie ambient music)
Sometimes, the subtitles on a film offer a more pithy synopsis of what it had to offer, than I ever could. Such is the case here, where you are watching two people, largely separately and independently, wander round the woods for an hour and a half. The area in question has been sealed off from the general public for decades, after a series of inexplicable deaths. After hearing about this on the radio, Loretta (Zalta) is unable to convince other half Randy (Denny) to explore the region, so goes off on her own. He follows, but neither are well-equipped – for the wilderness in general, or for the bizarre events which they subsequently experience.
Aliens. It’s probably aliens. Your guess, however, would be as good as mine, because you should not expect any help from the movie in this area. I’m not going to accuse writer-director Moffat of lazy film-making. I think he was, quite consciously, going for “enigmatic”. But the problem is, the results are exactly what lazy film-making would look like. A large helping of “Figure it out yourself,” topped with a cherry of incoherence. For when stuff happens here, it does so without apparent rhyme or reason. Witness Randy stumbling across a cabin in which a nightgown clad Loretta waits, only to suddenly attack him. “You’re almost there,” she subsequently says. And then… I wouldn’t want to spoil it. Anyway, that would likely require understanding it.
(Eerie ambient music continues)
In its sheer volume of “meandering about a forest while somewhat unsettling things happen”, this is up there with The Blair Witch Project, albeit with less shaky camerawork. Well, except for a mercifully brief sequence where Randy whips out his phone in the middle of the night, to shoot… something, I guess. There are positives: as noted, the cinematography is stable, and decent enough. The locations, around various California national parks, are magnificent, and despite my snark about the music, the soundtrack does its share of the lifting. I think it might have been a mistake to split up the protagonists. Let them bounce off each other while exploring the terrain, pose each other the questions we were asking.
Because there were certainly a lot of those. Not the least of which concern whatever it was Randy dug out, first from the back of his own neck, then from Loretta’s. It’s this which made me lean towards the alien explanation, along with the portals which transport both trespassers through space. And perhaps time as well, Randy suddenly appearing in the middle of a snowdrift, when he arrived on a bright summer’s day. Again: conscious choice, or sloppy continuity? Could be either. You decide. It’s the kind of thing where the low review grade is less because this is a “bad” film – contrast, say, Street Trash – and more a reflection of how frustrating I found this as a viewing experience.
(Eerie ambient music intensifies)