Rating: C+
Dir: Nathan Shepka
Star: Michaela Longden, Elle O’Hara, Nathan Shepka, Ben Brinicombe
The early stages of this have a definite (and acknowledged by Shepka) similarity to And Soon The Darkness – and definitely take the original over the remake. In particular, the set-up is almost identical. Two young women of contrasting character, are traveling in a foreign country when one of them suddenly vanishes. The other has to figure out what happened, while avoiding a similar fate, and dealing both with unhelpful locals and an obliging former cop. Rather than France or Argentina, the location here is the Scottish Highlands, although their part was played by the Scottish Borders – more convenient for the makers. But as in the remake, the tourists are American: outgoing Andrea (O’Hara) and more cautious Jess (Longden).
The subsequent differences are what make for the interest. The threat is defined in the first scene, where we meet Nate (Shepka) and buddy Tommy, burglars on tour with a large side order of sexual assault. Andrea vanishes after Jess leaves her in the dangerous company of the pair, and the only local willing to help is ex-policeman Beck (Brinicombe). This is where the story goes a different road from its predecessors. Jess ends up having to team up – albeit very reluctantly – with Nate, in order to find her friend and his loot respectively. Things are not as they seem. A lot of things, on both sides, as we discover alongside the new, uncertain allies (as Nate says, “It’s truce, not trust”), on our way to an equally uncertain ending.
There is a fair bit to take in, and the script, by British low-budget cinema veteran Tom Jolliffe, does struggle to get it all across in a plausible manner. For instance, after establishing Jess’s uber-cautious nature, a few minutes later, we have to accept her just walking off and abandoning her friend to the company of two men, from whom Jess has explicitly said she gets bad vibes. Also, having set Nate up as somebody who enjoys drugging and raping young women, it’s a tough climb back for the character; I never was able to see him as anything other than a reprehensible scumbag. It feels there may be rather too many scenes of Jess creeping slowly around a farmhouse, and as with Holiday Monday, a quicker hand in the editing bay might have been helpful.
However, the performances are solid, especially from Longden, who has to do a lot of the dramatic lifting. She keeps the audience engaged, even during the times when the plotting stumbles. On the technical side, the film looks far better than the reported £10,000 budget, with crisp camerawork, not hurt by the gorgeous local scenery. The limited resources are apparent in some areas: for instance, the entire resident population of the village is one (1): the local barman. Yet that may work for the atmosphere, enhancing the sense of isolation for Jess – filming during COVID helps too. Overall, this is a noticeable improvement in almost every way over Shepka’s first film, and a respectable, small-scale thriller.