Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Dane Elcar
Starring: Dana Berger, Max Woertendyke
Movies love dropping an estranged couple into a fraught scenario that
forces them to work together to find a way out, usually leading to a
happy ending where both parties realise they belong together. For his
feature debut, writer/director Dane Elcar gives us a couple on
the brink of divorce, but in this case the apprehension largely comes
from the notion that they may end up stuck together forever.
We find Jen (Dana Berger) and Dan (Max Woertendyke) the
morning after a party at which the latter drunkenly disgraced himself,
not for the first time it seems. Jen just wants to go for her morning
jog and listen to a podcast that offers advice to those pondering
divorce, but Dan wants to talk things over, convinced that their
relationship still has a future. "We've been together a long time," Dan
says. "A stupid amount of time," Jen replies. Jen's athletic frame and
Dan's paunch serve as a physical suggestion of the diverging life paths
the two are on, but for this morning they take the same path, one that
loops around a scenic pond.
As Jen runs on ahead, leaving a wheezing Dan behind, something seems
off. She loops back around to Dan quicker than she expected, as though
the path has somehow gotten shorter. The trail that serves as an exit
appears to have vanished. When Jen and Dan split up to find a way out,
Dan pops up behind Jen even though he took off in a different direction.
There seems to be no way to leave the pond, with any attempts simply
bringing Jen and Dan back to the point they set out from. It's as though
they're stuck in a video game with a limited map. To make things worse
there are sinister hooded figures lurking in the woods (leading to a
couple of jump scares reminiscent of the back of the diner scene in
Mulholland Drive), with screams echoing in the distance.
Brightwood is a trippy throwback to the wave of low
budget mindfuck movies that emerged at the start of the 2010s: think
Resolution, YellowBrickRoad and best of all,
Coherence. As the film's narrative begins to bend in on itself you may be
tempted to rewind to check if you failed to pick up on some important
plot point. To do so would be a disservice to the clever structure of
Elcar's film. While it may appear to have lost the plot in points, it
all comes together in a satisfying manner, leading to a grim conclusion
Rod Serling would be proud of.
Elcar's Twilight Zone-esque tale makes for a canny allegory for failed
relationships. Those stuck in a loveless marriage often feel like
there's no way out, trapped by legal proceedings, children or cultural
factors. As it becomes clear that various timelines are intersecting,
leading Jen and Dan to encounter and battle various incarnations of
themselves, it becomes a metaphor for the marriage counsellor's advice
that a troubled couple become the best version of themselves. Some of
the horror comes from our uncertainty over which version of Jen and Dan
we're actually following, with Elcar pulling off some clever bait and
switches to muddy the narrative waters.
With a single location and a cast of two,
Brightwood should prove inspirational for those setting
down the no-to-low-budget indie filmmaking path. But this is no mere
case of an exploitative filmmaker heading into the woods with a camera
and a pair of actors, something we've seen too many times in the years
since The Blair Witch Project. This is a film that has been clearly devised at the script stage,
making it a rare indie horror that wins us over with its storytelling as
much as its scares and suspense. I look forward to seeing where the
trail takes Elcar.
