Backcountry
IFC Midnight
Reviewed by: Tami Smith, Guest Reviewer for Shockya.
Grade: B+
Director: Adam MacDonald
Screenwriter: Adam MacDonald
Cast: Missy Peregrym, Jeff Roop, Eric Balfour, Nicholas Campbell, Bears Chester & Charlie
Opens: March 20, 2015
When boyfriend Alex (Jeff Roop) asks girlfriend Jenn (Missy Peregrym) on a hiking trip into the woods she reluctantly accepts. Jenn is a city lawyer and knows very little about the outdoors, but Alex is an experienced hiker and knows the trails, or so he says. Both Alex and Jenn are thirty something, so Alex is planning to “propose” and cement the deal with a diamond ring after arriving at the trail’s peak.
We start to get an uneasy feeling when their car turns from the express road into secondary one and from there into a dirt path. At the trail entry station we watch Jenn standing in the corner passively, since she really does not want to be there, while Alex exchanges pleasantries with the trail keeper. “No” says Alex, he does not need a map. A compass? What on earth for? He knows this trail very well. How about a rifle to scare predators away? Alex will have none of it. He hides Jenn’s cell phone and makes fun over her need for electronic flairs and a bear whistle.
On their first night out in the forest Alex goes to find wood for fire while Jenn chats with Brad (Eric Balfour), an Irish naturalist tour guide that came their way. Brad knows how to survive in the wild, hunt and fish, and has the large knife to show for it, that will make Mick Dundee proud.
He ends their outdoor dinner by turning around and relieving himself against a tree, to the great discomfort of Alex and Jenn, thus marking territory and declaring in an unspoken language to Jenn: “You shall be mine”.
It turns out that Brad is not the greatest problem Alex will face during the course of this 92 minutes Canadian suspense drama. He will have to deal with a foot injury, bleeding and the increased knowledge that he, “Mr. No Map”, and Jenn are lost, running out of provisions and have just entered into deep Bear Country.
Black bears (Chester & Charlie) are not shy about declaring their territory, and become increasingly active during the night after smelling human blood. What will happen to Alex and Jenn? If this were an American made film they will come out of this adventure with flying colors, declaring their eternal love. Since Backcountry is Canadian made movie director MacDonald takes us on a bitter-sweet road trip, that will leave Jenn wearing a diamond ring, during the shortest engagement ever to be filmed on celluloid, while using a bear whistle.
Not since viewing the 2003 two-character drama Open Water, about two scuba divers accidentally stranded in shark infested waters after their tour boat has left, did I get so emotionally involved in the fate of two protagonists.
Jeff Roop and Missy Peregrym turn in heart wrenching performances, as Alex and Jenn, showing a whole range of emotions from joy in the beginning of the the trip to distressed-hope in the middle and total desperation in the end. Eric Balfour, an American-born actor, is convincing as Brad, the Irish tour guide, who turns out to be the smartest and most practical guy in the room. Stunt work is most ably done by Crystal Mudry and John Sampson.
Cinematographer Christian Bietz gives us a magnificent look of the woods in North Bay, Powassan and Restoule in Ontario and Squamish in British Columbia all located in the Canadian wilderness.
Unrated. 92 minutes. © Tami Smith, Guest Reviewer
Story: B+
Acting: A-
Technical: A
Overall: B+