Review of Backcountry (2015) by Mark M — 22 Apr 2015

A tale of survival in the wilderness, Adam Macdonald's Backcountry is an exercise in foreshadowing and red herrings that is supposedly based on a true story. The first act in Macdonald's directorial debut struggles to set up the two characters through clunky, almost cliché relationship dialogue and liberal sprinkling of various Checkhov's gun elements, while the second act introduces two possible antagonists from very different backgrounds after the first appears in the previous act, and the third revolves solely around survival. It's a structure that doesn't stray far from away from movies based on survival or even slasher movies.

Rippling out from the actions of Alex that is grounded in machismo and arrogance, Backcountry is - like many nature-based narratives set around the idea of survival - a tale that pits humans against nature by placing the characters from the city in a setting without controlled uniformity or order. It's a theme that even stretches to a crucial sequence involving one of the characters, an antagonist, and the justified use of jump cuts with shaky cam that combine to mask the on-going chaos but later going on to reveal the gruesome aftermath, much like any form of documented natural disaster.

The movie begins rather dull - bar its cinematography -, starts to simmer with the introduction of a creepy, roving character in Brad (Eric Balfour), peaks by the end of the second act and gradually, slowly loses steam while it limps towards the ending due the ill-handling of the screenplay by increasing the stakes but failing to allow the human element and tension to catch up. Yet the chaotic journey through the middle of Backcountry in the Canadian wilderness and onwards saves itself from being weighed down by its trite human elements with how Macdonald presents nature in its raw, untamed and primal form that stands brazenly against the arrogance of man.