3) Backcountry
US Distribution: IFC Midnight
Release Date: TBD
While Backcountry played as part of Toronto’s Discovery slate, I caught this creature feature at the Film Lincoln Center right here in New York City, where bears and nature are the least of a commuter’s worries (besides man-eating sewer rats!). Thankfully my city-slicker attitude didn’t prevent me from loving every single minute of Adam McDonald’s reinstatement of nature’s dominant fury, but those thanks should go McDonald’s way for making the first disturbingly horrific animal movie in quite some time. Sharknados might be all the rage, but nothing beats gritty, primal fury in the form of a lumbering mammal.
Missy Peregrym and Jeff Roop play a boyfriend/girlfriend tandem planning a romantic outdoorsy excursion, but when Roop’s character confidently gets them lost without a map, survival becomes their only focus. As days turn into nights, the two find themselves fleeing from the clutches of a predatory bear who is looking for its next snack – and this is where Peregrym kicks into survivalist mode. For all the woodsman knowledge Roop displays during the film’s opening, it’s Peregrym who shines here as a rookie survivalist thrust into the most intense training experience imaginable.
Backcountry is no-frills, down-home horror that uses reality as its biggest source of fear – it’s pretty much a furrier Jaws.
Published: Nov 21, 2014 03:17 pm