Rating: C
Dir: Richard Harrah
Star: Yvonne Strahovski, Eion Bailey, Will Patton
Fucking snowbirds. Every winter, they flock down here to Arizona from the north, clogging up our freeways, restaurants and parking lots. So pardon me if my sympathy is rather limited for the couple at the centre of this. Nick (Bailey) and Lori (Strahovski) travel down from Illinois, get married by an Elvis impersonator in Vegas, then head for the Grand Canyon to take a mule excursion to the bottom. Only they – being stupid fucking snowbirds – didn’t realize you have to sign up in advance. In a bar, they meet grizzled tourist guide Henry (Patton), who offers to take them on a bootleg trip, bypassing that whole pesky “authorization” thing. They agree. At the risk of repeating myself: stupid fucking snowbirds.
Things inevitably go wrong, to absolutely no-one’s surprise except Nick and Lori. Specifically, rattlesnakes spook Henry’s mule, throwing him onto the ground, breaking his arm and basically dropping him into the rattlers’ jaws. Multiple injections of venom follow. It’s up to the newly-married couple to try and make their way to safety. Because nobody is coming for them on their unofficial jaunt, and cellphone reception at the bottom of the Grand Canyon isn’t up to the high standards of downtown Chicago. Further bad fortune follows in a variety of ways. For example, the party finds itself being hunted by a pack of wolves: the animals were presumably upset at being in a place where wolves had not actually been seen for approaching seventy years.
It is kinda obvious this wasn’t filmed in the Grand Canyon: when you get shots of it, none of them contain any of the characters. Utah and Antelope Canyon, in Arizona but NE of the real location, stood in. Though Antelope can be no less lethal. In 1997, 11 tourists were killed there in a flash flood. The terrain is also oddly inconsistent. One moment they’re in a canyon, the next it’s wide open to the horizon. Then they’re back trying to climb out and get a cell signal. The escape attempt goes badly wrong and leads to what would be called a 127 Hours sequence, except this came out the year before [the incident which inspired it is referenced here, having happened in 2003].
It’s one of the moments that work: there just are not enough of them. Instead, we get too much wandering – or staggering, or dragging – around the admittedly scenic wilderness, with chit-chat that doesn’t add much to the scenario. Bailey in particular is blandly forgettable; Strahovski, in her first American feature role, does better. Lori develops from someone who wrinkles her nose at drinking booze from the bottle, to battling wolves in hand-to-hand combat, and eating the loser. Another plus: the ending is surprisingly bleak, reminding me of a certain Stephen King adaptation, which is not somewhere I expected to go. It remains only marginally interesting as a wilderness thriller. Though if it manages to dissuade any potential Northern visitors from coming to Arizona, I would have to consider it worth the effort.