Rating: C+
Dir: Ian Gordon
Star: Ian Gordon, Dave Gordon
Productions do not get much more COVID-friendly than this one, in terms of isolation. Virtually the entire film takes part in the middle of absolutely nowhere, in the heart of the Scottish Highlands, above. A hillwalker (Gordon), regains consciousness to find himself lying on the floor of a mountain bothy – a primitive hut built to offer shelter to mountaineers, etc. He has no recollection of how he got there, a badly-injured leg, and – for once – the “no signal” trope seems entirely accurate. He’s still attached to his rope, which is unfortunate, because something tries to drag him out of the bothy by it. Fortunately, another hillwalker shows up, and helpfully advises the injured man that a third person has gone to get help, so he just needs to wait.
The film then enters the frostbite part of proceedings. Because the pace here is not so much slow, as a glacial burn. The two men hang out and chat for… The best part of an hour, I’d estimate. This is a bit more interesting than it might sound, in part because the new arrival is quite voluble, and has an extensive knowledge of local folklore and legends. Some of the stories he tells are very interesting, merging genuine incidents (the Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui is a real – or at least, reported – thing) with fabricated stories, like the guy who was rat poisoned. Yet from the very beginning, there’s a sense of “not right” about the new arrival.
The viewer’s paranoia gradually seeps over into the protagonist, who eventually decides he is better off no longer being in the same space as his visitor. He leaves the bothy, and… Well, things happen. For a while, I was on the fence as to whether or not it worked. Some of it seems too abstract for its own good; other elements are effective, in an almost Wicker Man sense. Then it commits, and I did feel it was able to deliver, in a way that was surprisingly effective. Probably merited the “+” on the rating: until that point, you could definitely tell this was made under harsh limitations of both resources and a pandemic. It bordered on a feature-length version of “Talk is cheap.”
Consequently, it is too long, at 104 minutes, with the middle section which could use trimming. Does feel like you are a fly on the wall, listening in on a genuine conversation. On the other hand, this can only take you so far. Turns out, “so far” is significantly less than an hour, and I will admit, my attention drifted at times. When you are working on a micro-budget, it may be best not to linger too long on the same characters in a single location. Yet the basic idea here is a sound one, and I am always down for movies which incorporate elements of Celtic folklore in them. You can never go wrong with Scottish scenery either. Who needs special effects when you have Braeriach?