The film works quickly to create a creepy and unsettling
atmosphere. It also provides moments that seem designed to get the audience
questioning the film’s sense of reality. There is a shot of Grace looking in
the mirror, saying that everything is fine, that Jim just went for a walk and
will be right back, and it’s unclear just when that is happening. For then we
go to Grace and Jim arriving at a cabin, where that night he proposes to her.
Later that night she wakes from another nightmare, this one about seeing her
father killing himself. And it is her strange relationship with her parents
that continues to plague her.
In the morning, Jim takes her on a hike through the
woods. Before they leave, she asks if they’ll be back before dinner, as she’s
trying to decide whether to take along her medication. He says yes, so she leaves
her pills behind. Uh-oh. At this point we’re not sure just what these pills are
for, but clearly they’re important. Also important, and a bit odd, is the fact
that Jim brings a gun along on their hike, apparently in case they run into a
bear. Also odd is that when they reach their destination in the woods, they are
seated some distance from each other. Jim asks, “Remember when we first met,”
then adds, “We were a mess.” It’s a bit of clunky exposition, but it’s
soon clear that Grace hasn’t changed. Jim then gets up to see about finding an
easier way back to the cabin, an awkward contrivance. But it’s followed by a
really interesting shot, in which Grace is in the foreground, looking at her
unsteady hand, while Jim is deep in the background. The camera pushes in
slightly on Grace, and suddenly there is a gunshot and Jim falls. There is a
shot of their backpack and the gun, but it’s not clear where they are in
relation to either character. And it’s interesting and telling that Grace
doesn’t seem frightened that there might be someone else in the woods shooting
at them. She goes running for help and is soon lost.
But Grace isn’t just lost in the woods. She is lost in
her own mind, in some combination of memory and dream, in which her dead
parents and grandfather are very much active. It’s a great set-up. The problem
is that Grace doesn’t seem all that interested in getting out of the woods, not
even at first. She doesn’t have any plan for getting out, but just sort of
hangs out by the river, and keeps washing her face in the water. She worries
about food and drink, though when she ends up back where she started, she does
find a bottle of water in the backpack. But she also takes off her engagement
ring, puts it back in the case (which for some reason is in the backpack – why
did Jim take the empty case along on their hike?), and tosses it. It’s such a
cold thing to do, that we lose a great deal of sympathy for her. She does
finally come up with a good plan for getting out of the woods, but then
abandons it rather quickly.
I am intrigued enough about her backstory, but never
really concerned whether she makes it out of the woods or not. That’s partly
because she herself doesn’t seem to be concerned, and partly because she’s not
a likeable character. Sure, that might be by design, but the ending would be
more powerful if the journey she took had more of a progression, if she were
more human at the beginning. And some of the things revealed later on are
obvious from the start. What is interesting is that this film works almost like
a prequel to the sort of slasher and horror films popular in the 1980s. It’s a
different perspective.
Girl In Woods was written and directed by Jeremy
Benson, and was released on VOD on June 3, 2016.
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