A park ranger's past haunts her when she takes a post in the remote back
country of a national park.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Teresa Sutherland
Starring: Georgina Campbell, Nick Blood, Wai Ching Ho
It takes a certain type of personality to take on the role of a back
country ranger in one of America's vast national parks. The job often
requires you to be alone in the deep woods for weeks at a time, so it
probably attracts those who wish to escape human interaction for various
reasons, sort of like the Foreign Legion for anyone who doesn't like
being shouted at.
The protagonist of Teresa Sutherland's feature debut
Lovely, Dark, and Deep initially seems like she's become a
park ranger for such anti-social reasons. Lennon (Georgina Campbell) has agreed to spend the summer manning a ranger station deep in the
woods of the fictional Arvores national park. The awkward attempts of
fellow rangers to make small talk are rebuffed by Lennon, who seems
eager to get as far away from people as possible and immerse herself in
the solitude of the woods.
We quickly learn that Lennon may have an ulterior motive for taking up
this post. 20 years ago her little sister Jenny disappeared in Arvores,
never to be seen again. Brief flashes of Lennon's nightmares suggest she
has been weighed down with guilt ever since. Rather than staying put at
her cabin and awaiting orders, Lennon takes it upon herself to hike into
the woods for days at a time, presumably hoping to find some clues as to
what became of her sister. A snippet of a podcast tells us that Jenny is
but one of hundreds who have disappeared in the park, and it's suggested
that a cover-up is being deployed by the powers that be.
When Lennon stumbles across a distraught, lost young woman who mumbles
the words "Are you real?" upon sight of the ranger, it sets off a chain
of increasingly surreal and nightmarish events that cause Lennon to
question her sanity. She receives garbled instructions over her walkie
talkie despite its batteries being drained. She comes across an elderly
camping couple who don't seem to be aware of her presence. Entering her
cabin, she finds herself back in her childhood home.
Lovely, Dark, and Deep, which takes its name from Robert Frost's poem 'Stopping by Woods on a
Snowy Evening', is but the latest in a growing line of American indie
horrors that posit America's backwoods as possessing the enigmatic
powers of "The Zone" from Tarkovsky's
Stalker
or the titular setting of Peter Weir's
Picnic at Hanging Rock. The surreal second half of Sutherland's film plays like a compendium
of moments cribbed from the likes of Twin Peaks, The Blair Witch Project, Yellow Brick Road and the recent
Twilight Zone-esque thriller
Brightwood. Such sequences are well executed, but for seasoned genre fans there's
a distinct lack of originality in its box of tricks. After drawing us in
with an intriguing mystery in its opening scenes,
Lovely, Dark, and Deep gradually begins to test our
patience with the anything goes nature of its back half.
It's Campbell's performance that keeps things grounded even when the
surreal shit begins to hit the absurdist fan. The British actress has
quickly established herself as a reliable staple of genre cinema and
possesses the sort of convincing vulnerability that makes her the ideal
horror heroine. Were it not for Campbell's presence and the spectacular
setting (Portugal convincingly standing in for an American national
park), Lovely, Dark, and Deep would be more of a slog than
a trek through its woods. Despite its atmospheric setting, Sutherland's
debut never manages to get sufficiently under our skin. As a horror
movie it has miles to go before it causes us to lose any sleep.
