Rating: C+
Dir: Adam MacDonald
Star: Missy Peregrym, Jeff Roop, Eric Balfour, Nicholas Campbell
This is the kind of film where you can sit smugly on your comfortable sofa, shaking your head sadly at the poor choices made by the characters. The first and biggest, being the decision to go camping in the first place. Trust me when I say, this is not a mistake we will be making. Indeed, this might be a movie produced by the Hotel Owners’ Association of North America, because if you watch this and still have an interest in a vacation not involving room service, you simply aren’t paying attention. Not least because this is based on a true story, when a couple were attacked by a bear while on holiday in northern Ontario.
Here, it’s Alex (Roop) who drags him somewhat unwilling girlfriend Jenn (Peregrym) to his childhood haunt of Nibookaazo Provincial Park. [Fun fact: in Ojibwe, Nibookaazo translates as “Pretend to be Dead”] He plans to propose at a specific spot, but turns out his wilderness navigational skills aren’t as good as he thinks, after refusing the offer of a map. Making matters worse, he deliberately left Jenn’s cellphone back in the car, to avoid it being a distraction. Things get ominous early on, when they encounter suspicious hiker Brad (Balfour). However, it gradually becomes clear that a bigger, badder predator than Brad is to be found in the woods. There’s a black bear in the area, and it’s looking to fatten itself up on a hiker buffet, before going into hibernation for the winter.
You will have to sit through a good deal of set-up to get to the meat of the matter. The bear itself doesn’t appear until 48 minutes in, and then is still only glimpsed in silhouette, prowling around and snorting (derisively, I like to think) outside the couple’s tent. If only tents, unlike hotel rooms, came with deadbolts. The ursine creature does loom over things regardless, to the point the obvious red herring of Brad seems a pointless distraction. When it finally makes its move, however, it’s a brutal and unpleasant sequence, getting up there with The Revenant, I’d say. You don’t necessarily see a great deal: however, the audio work, in particular the screams of the victim, is excellent, and harrowing in the extreme.
Thereafter, it’s a case of the survivor trying to make their way out of the park to safety, with the bear largely back to lurking. To be honest, the film peaks with the attack. Nothing thereafter can match up, though a sequence involving the descent of a waterfall has its moments of tension. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for characters, who are largely suffering the consequences of their own actions, particularly in the case of Alex. It feels like MacDonald is vaguely seeking to make some statement about masculine hubris: this is the wilderness equivalent of refusing to stop and ask for directions. Any such point may well stick in the mind less well than the rending and gnawing.