Rating: C+
Dir: Derek Barnes
Star: Emily Alatalo, Tim Rozon, Jon McLaren, Greg Bryk, Milton Barnes
You might be forgiven, in the early stages, for thinking you know where this is going. Truth be told, you’re probably not too wrong. However, the route it takes to get there is a tad unusual. It lifts this, if not quite up to the level of a genuine recommendation, at least to the point I didn’t feel my time had been wasted. Chloe (Alatalo) was married to Chicago crime boss Donnie (Bryk), until she decides to give evidence against him and join the witness protection program, along with her two kids. Donnie is none too happy, sending two minions to kidnap her and reclaim his children. She breaks out of the car in which she’s being transported, and flees into the wilderness beside the road.
That’s about where you may be drawing a mental road-map of what’s to come. But, wait! She bumps into the owner of the land, Jake (Rozon), a former Marine. He certainly has the skills to help her defeat her enemies, consisting not just of the low-level henchmen. When they fail to bring Chloe back, Donnie brings in a real professional, in the shape of Zach (Barnes). The problem is, the more Chloe hangs out with Jake, in and around his remote cabin, the more apparent it is that he’s a couple of sandwiches short of a full picnic. I’d say it becomes particularly clear at the point where Jake dispatches one henchman by first severing his spine, then feeding his head into a log-splitter.
This tension, with Chloe now facing threats from two directions, is what mainly informs and propells the second half. I did consider briefly whether or not to discuss Jake’s madness, as a spoiler. But the film’s IMDb synopsis makes no effort to hide the angle, so it seems fair game to me. It does make for a novel twist to the usual, although the net result by the end is the same: Chloe needs to get in touch with her inner Amazon in order to survive. This aspect of her persona has been there, from the moment she puts up a fight when being kidnapped, breaking one thug’s nose. It’s going to need to flourish considerably more, if our heroine is going to get out of the woods alive.
This is all competent enough to pass muster – albeit only occasionally doing much more than that. The script does have its flaws, such as Chloe spraying Jake with bear spray, then inexplicably failing to press her advantage, instead simply flouncing off into the woods. I felt the climax of this arc was also a little implausible. More guile, in place of brute force, would have helped. On the other hand, the performances are largely good enough to merit forgiveness for the story’s shortcomings. Bryk in particular manages to bring some nuance to a character that could easily have been one-dimensional. Not quite as rote as I expected, and that’s a good thing.