Backcountry is all about this young couple who need a weekend in the woods to realize why they’re wrong for each other. She’s a lawyer who’s interested in playing on her smartphone with her friends. The movie’s from 2014; maybe it’s supposed to be Candy Crush? Is 2014 too early for Instagram?
Missy Peregrym plays the female lead.
Her Romeo is Jeff Roop, who acts like he once had an acting coach who really believed in him but it turns out was dead wrong about Roop’s abilities. Like, Peregrym’s flat. There’s a moment, late in the film, when she’s supposed to be on the brink of collapse, run through more than she ever thought she could survive, and she’s sort of scowl-peering like she’s trying to see what director MacDonald’s telling her to do. It’s even worse because we know by that time in the film… MacDonald (hopefully) isn’t giving his actors any direction.
The script he gets them to perform is bad enough.
Roop is a failed landscaper or something. He’s maybe going to get a friend of his to sell him a share in his successful landscaping firm or something. But he lives off Peregrym, obviously.
They’re going up to a provincial park–Backcountry isn’t ashamed of its Canadianity (I mean, it’s got “Da Vinci” Nicolas Campbell cameoing and it tries to pretend very American Eric Balfour is Irish)—but they still don’t draw too much attention to it. They never mention Toronto, which I vaguely recall was always the eighties giveaway.
Now, MacDonald’s got a problem with perspective. Almost throughout. But he maybe gets some first act forgiveness because most of it is him doing these rote montage sequences. The beginning is a bunch of shots of the car driving out of civilization into the wild—the Backcountry. Neither Roop or Peregrym’s likable during their car trip (it’s scary to think they’re supposed to be) and once they get to the park, we find out Roop’s got something special planned for their trip.
He’s very obviously going to propose.
Very obviously.
To the point it’s almost a surprise Peregrym isn’t supposed to know about it and just have ignored it while playing Candy Crush, which is what MacDonald thinks lawyers do. I mean. Sure, but she’s supposed to be a movie lawyer. She doesn’t seem lawyerly enough for “Night Court.”
Because she’s bad. It’s bad. Backcountry’s bad.
I mean, are the gore effects good?
Sure. MacDonald doesn’t know how to direct them—or anything else—Christian Bielz doesn’t know how to light them (though he’s better than expected during daylight scenes, nighttime no), and editor Dev Singh doesn’t know how to cut them. The editing is the least competent part of Backcountry but you can tell it’s MacDonald’s idea. Singh clearly had terrible footage to work with.
Vince Nudo’s score, which is kind of an eighties synth thing but restrained (Tangerine Dream meets Vangelis), isn’t exactly good or even interesting but it’s peculiar in a not bad way.
And peculiar in a not bad way is something special for Backcountry, which is otherwise entirely unremarkable in its badness.
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