Outlander (2014) s01e02 – Castle Leoch

This episode features a scene where highlander heartthrob Sam Heughan fails to rescue a woman from being raped. It’s a flashback. Time-traveling World War II nurse Caitriona Balfe is just making intrusive conversation. The rapist is Tobias Menzies, who plays Balfe’s future husband and his present-day, eighteenth-century ancestor. Balfe mooning over memories of Menzies while his other visual representation is as a vicious rapist is another of the show’s wild swings but whatever. Let’s concentrate on the show making a point to objectify the victim.

When I thought “Outlander” was throwing the nudity into the home video releases, it kind of made sense. Dudes buy blu-rays, and dudes like pointless nudity. But “Outlander” is a show targeted at women. From a book series targeted at women. So Heughan is all heroic and fantastic for the women viewers, then there’re numerous shots of the victim’s boobs to appeal to the women’s male partners? Then there’s another pointless nude scene for Balfe.

I guess Heughan’s got very shiny pecs in a warm light scene but the show’s otherwise anti-beefcake. Just vulnerable women naked, both times without their consent. It feels very off and very odd.

The episode story pairs with the last one, with Balfe getting acclimated in the past while poorly narrating the experience. She’s overly confident in her knowledge of history, and it gets her in trouble. The show doesn’t think about the connotations of her being unreliable in her self-confidence, not even bringing in the narration being past tense so she’d be aware of her failings. There are some renaissance fair-ready costumes, an ally for Balfe in Annette Badland, and a pal in Lotte Verbeek. Balfe needs all the friends she can get because Graham McTavish is having her followed everywhere by a couple of his goons, and at least one of them definitely wants to rape Balfe. He wanted to rape her last episode; he’s ominously eying her this one; the other goon tells her to watch out because he’s rapey. So even though she’s seemingly safe, she’s not. Correspondingly, of course, no women are, and yet we’re supposed to like the dudes.

“Outlander” is very much a “the patriarchy isn’t real” type of show.

Balfe also meets the local lord, played by Gary Lewis. He’s McTavish’s brother and has a degenerative disease, so there’s a weird relationship between the two. Both give fine performances, even with the tepid writing.

Besides being boring and the narration being bad—not to mention the “but it’s realistic, so it’s okay” nudity—“Outlander”’s biggest problem is the thoughtless plotting. Also, in addition to the flashbacks, there are flash-forwards to inform Balfe’s character development. So "Outlander"'s also got the problem of being very cheaply told.

Though Heughan would make a good live-action He-Man, I guess.

Outlander (2014) s01e01 – Sassenach

I’ve been operating under the misconception the home video version of Sassenach was an extended cut, and they’d added all the nudity. Nope, it was apparently in the original Starz version. Cool.

The nudity’s all of star Caitriona Balfe, who’s the narrator and protagonist of the show, but when it comes time to drop her drawers, the eyes are all director John Dahl’s. “Outlander” is a historical hard sci-fi romance. Except for the most history in this episode is Balfe’s husband Tobias Menzies droning on about his family genealogy. The only thing more boring than actual genealogy? Some boring dude talking about fake genealogy. Menzies and Balfe are in Scotland on a post-World War II holiday; they’re trying to reconnect after being apart for five years. He was in military intelligence—not an agent himself, but the office guy who sent them to their deaths—and she was a nurse.

Supposedly they’ve been having a rough time since the end of the war, but it seems mostly to be a lack of trying. In the tedious narration, Balfe explains whenever they’re having problems, all they need to do is get jiggy, and then they’re fine. Though they may need to get jiggy in public for it to work. Or at least be a little exhibitionist-y about it. Not to kink shame. Though it’s very unclear why Dahl’s so keen to ogle Balfe (especially since “Outlander”’s target audience is women, you can even google it) and not Menzies. Other than once Balfe gets to the past and runs into Menzies’s ancestor he can’t shut up about, it turns out the ancestor is an eager rapist and cruel piece of shit.

Eager rapists and cruel pieces of shit are two different things on “Outlander” because Balfe eventually ends up with a group of Scottish highlanders—there be many more than one—but only two of them don’t want to rape her. One because he’s not cool with rape (Graham McTavish, who gives far and away from the best performance) and one because he’s the hot guy (Sam Heughan). Everyone in the past is filthy and gross except Heughan, forecasting his and Balfe’s chemistry. Plus, he’s injured, and she has to nurse him over and over.

The present-day material starts dull and gets worse as Menzies gets more and more enthusiastic about the genealogy, but it also becomes clear the narration isn’t going to stop. I’m not sure if the narration’s from the source novel or the writers’ room (Ronald D. Moore got the credit, which is an inglorious one), but it’s terrible. And never once matches the corresponding action. It’s like an object lesson in why poorly executed narration is so damaging.

Once Balfe gets to the past, where she brings mid-ish-twentieth century mobile army nursing techniques, the occasional helpful future knowledge tidbit, and enough curse words to shock all her new wannabe rapist pals, the narration pretty much stops. At least until the cliffhanger. But the quiet’s nice. And Heughan and Balfe do seem like they’ll have sufficient charm together. But, wow, is it a rough and endless sixty minutes.

Manchette’s Fatale (2014)

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I wanted to read Manchette’s Fatale because Jacques Tardi never finished his and Jean-Patrick Manchette’s adaptation of Manchette’s novel. They only did a few pages, and I got curious about where the story was going. And while the novel’s been translated to English… well, I mean, I don’t read read anymore. Come on. So I figured another completed comic adaptation. I maybe should’ve gone with the prose.

There’s nothing wrong with Doug Headline and Max Cabanes’s adaptation. The finale’s protracted, but it’s never tedious. Cabanes’s art is always good enough to carry it, as the roosters come to roost and discover they may be in over their heads. But Headline’s adapting of the novel is just to present big blocks of prose, often to carry scene transitions or scene setups. On rare occasions, dialogue exchanges are summarized. Most of the prose blocks are for exposition and characters’ internal thoughts or feelings. There are many prose blocks, however, and “most” just means more than fifty percent. Headline’s script leverages Manchette’s source novel—down to the prose itself—and Cabanes’s illustrative talents.

In other words, it’s an exceedingly pointless adaptation. The illustrations mainly accompany text, whether prose or dialogue, and there’s very little solely executed visually. There are a handful of big scenes—but ones Tardi already did in his adaptation (the femme fatale protagonist slathering herself in sauerkraut to celebrate a murder, the town miscreant peeing on the well-to-do’s floors), and they compare poorly. If Cabanes brought real personality to it instead of competent illustration—ditto Headline’s script—there might be something there.

Worse, the sauerkraut and retributive urination both come up later on in the dialogue, retroactively lessening the effect. Despite Manchette having no problem keeping the reader in the dark about the lead’s activities—specifically when setting up the big score—and doling out hints until the dramatic reveal, Headline’s too into exposition to let moments go without examination. Until the big score and fallout, which takes up at least the last quarter—though maybe just the final third (it’s interminable), Fatale’s mostly a character study of its protagonist. We learn more and more about her as things go on—including a backstory reveal road trip—and nothing about the big score itself. There are well-drawn caricatures with names and jobs and secrets. They only matter because they’re potential fodder for the protagonist. Or for Headline to needlessly expound about.

Fatale’s a compelling, well-illustrated thriller. But, unfortunately, nothing is exciting about it. Cabanes’s characters look good but disappoint.

Awkwardly, I just discovered Headline’s Manchette’s son. Whoops. And the source novel(la) is under a hundred pages. So maybe just go with the prose.

It Follows (2014, David Robert Mitchell)

It Follows is a monster movie. Somewhere in the second half of the film, the monster starts acting with more malice towards its targets, like it’s frustrated it hasn’t been able to kill them yet. Given it’s an invisible sex monster—or, I guess, possibly an invisible sex demon—there’s a particular energy to it. There’s always specific energy to the sex in Follows. It’s always transactional; it’s always wrong. Abstinence is the only way to keep the sex demons away.

But if writer and director Mitchell is doing the whole thing to tell young folks to wait until they’re married—though it wouldn’t save you either, in fact, it’s just making your doom all the more convenient. So hang on, there are rules.

The monster doesn’t “follow” so much as walk directly towards its target. It has one target at a time, but previous targets can also see it because once the current target is resolved, the one previous becomes the target. The only way to pass the target along is through sex. It’s sexually transmitted but apparently not through bodily fluids, and it’s unclear if Clinton definitions apply. Even after the Scooby Gang gets together to save the final girl-to-be(?), Maika Monroe, and they come up with plans to deal with the monster… there’s never a big exposition dump about their ideas. Given how many decisions are made offscreen or when the music gloriously blares over any conversation, anything’s possible. Because while Mitchell doing it all as a VD analogy is probably too much, he’s got the class angle in there.

While the gang isn’t Richie Rich, they’re doing a lot better than many residents of their neighboring city, Detroit, MI. At the beginning of the second act, there’s a scene where they drive through the city and stare out at the urban blight, only to talk about it later on. And it’s going to figure into the resolution. So it’s very much there. Of the two symbolisms, he went with the white American bourgeoisie being devils over VD being their undoing. It works out. Like, it’s solid symbolism. If Mitchell had any third act tricks up his sleeve whatsoever, who knows where it would’ve led.

But the third act is a mess. It’s an initially ambitious mess, where the ideas just stop being good at a certain point, and there’s nothing left to do but wait for a sequel. Or not.

The film’s a stunning mix of monster, horror, slasher, and teen angst. But good indie teen angst, handheld teen angst. Bringing all those moods together is the sensational music by Disasterpeace. It’s electronic, occasionally very video game sounds (intentionally), keeping the atmosphere in check. Without the music, It Follows wouldn’t be anywhere near as potentially terrifying in its mundane. The music’s particularly vital in the first act before the Scooby Gang sets off, and it’s all about Monroe’s recovery from trauma. It Follows is never more actually violent or intense than the first act, but only because the film ends if Monroe dies and it’s a hundred-minute movie; in other words, there are many actual breathers, even as the film keeps the tension up. If only Mitchell had another fifteen minutes of ratcheting up the tension, it’d be incredible.

As is, it’s still damn good. Monroe’s a good lead, and the Scooby Gang’s all effective. There are multiple love triangles, always involving Keir Gilchrist—more like he inserts himself in them—including dreamboat neighbor with a past Daniel Zovatto, who Monroe’s little sister, Lili Sepe, likes. Olivia Luccardi’s the other friend, who reads Dostoevsky on a pocket clamshell (literally) e-reader. They all get personalities but always in the background. Mitchell’s script and direction are wonderfully efficient in the setups.

Excellent photography from Mike Gioulakis for most of the film; third act, it goes slightly to pot (for the big finale, so it’s essential) and never really has a chance to come back. Great editing from Julio C. Perez IV. The editing’s the most important thing. Perez and Mitchell have a great sense of timing (ditto Disasterpeace for the music).

It Follows is outstanding, but Mitchell bunts the third act, which is disappointing.

Bonobo (2014, Matthew Hammett Knott)

Bonobo has a lot of good instincts, but director Knott and his crew don’t seem to know how to realize them. The most obvious problem is cinematographer James Aspinall, who doesn’t seem to know what he should be doing—Bonobo is always too sharp and too muddy, a decidedly DV problem—but then you realize there’s bad headroom in every single shot of the movie and you’ve got to wonder what Knott thinks he ought to be doing. Knott seems to know what kind of narrative distance the film needs, but can’t execute it due to bad composition and half-hearted writing. Knott co-wrote with Joanna Benecke and they know what scenes the film needs but not how to write them, which fits since Knott doesn’t know how to shoot them and Aspinall doesn’t know how to light them.

Some of the problem is the low budget and the filmmakers not knowing how to compensate. For example, the majority of the action takes place at a “Bonobo community,” where the residents try to do as the bonobo do—lots of hugging, lots of touching, lots of sex—but it’s a house in a residential area so there have to be neighbors. Only Knott’s trying to hide them not having great locations so all of a sudden the suburban look will come through out of nowhere. Of course, Knott doesn’t know how to do establishing shots in the interiors either so it shouldn’t really be a surprise. But—right up until the last scene—somehow every miss manages to be obvious.

With a rewrite and a better director, cinematographer, and composer (while not terrible or anything, Eugene Feygelson’s omnipresent score gets tedious fast), Bonobo could be something special because it’s got a solid premise. Tessa Peake-Jones is a fifty-something suburban (or whatever they call it in the UK) mom to law school dropout Eleanor Wyld. Wyld has run off to the aforementioned bonobo nudist house—six months before the movie begins—and Peake-Jones finally goes to check on her.

There Peake-Jones meets community leader Josie Lawrence, a primatologist who’s stopped observing bonobos in the wild and instead just has lots of sex with the house full of hotties she’s assembled. Her prize stud is James Norton, who just happens to be paired with Wyld for the time being. Norton’s going to quickly reveal himself to just be a manipulative narcissist—mocking Lawrence’s age behind her back to the other dudes and so on—and he’ll be the film’s second biggest plot fail.

The biggest plot fail, however, is Wyld. She and Peake-Jones can’t talk for the first two days Peake-Jones is visiting the house, so Wyld just says crappy things about her mom while Peake-Jones goes through a manners comedy before forming a very nice bond with Lawrence. From that point, the narrative starts following Lawrence as well as Peake-Jones and relegates Wyld to supporting their arcs.

It makes some sense because the writers clearly don’t have a character for Wyld so they’re trying to avoid it (just like establishing shots), but it means there’s a lot of meandering in an eighty minute movie.

Still, Peake-Jones and Lawrence have some really good moments. Norton’s not bad, just got a bad part. And Wyld’s got a lot of potential, shame they don’t do anything with her.

Bonobo seems to know what an indie darling needs to be an indie darling, but Knott doesn’t have a single idea of how to incorporate those elements into his film.

The History of Time Travel (2014, Ricky Kennedy)

Once The History of Time Travel gets to the gimmick, it’s a good gimmick. Writer and director Kennedy even manages to get a good finish with the gimmick, which is something since it means making the third act of History incredibly tedious to build anticipation. And a lot of History has already been tedious, so it’s a definite accomplishment when Kennedy can pull it off. He bets on the gimmick, he bets on how to introduce it, how to change the intensity of it, and it works.

History is a mockumentary about, you guessed it, the history of time travel if someone had done time travel. There are a bunch of talking heads interviewees—none of very good, Michael Tubbs is the worst, followed by Bill Small, who’s just trying too hard versus being bad. The rest of them struggle through the first act, when History is at its most “authentic,” but do much better once the gimmick takes off.

The pseudo-authenticity is one of the film’s biggest hurdles—the interviewees are supposed to be Ivy League intelligentsia but can’t pull it off. Especially not with Kennedy's script. The narration—and the narration performance by Brad Maule—are terrible. The dialogue’s not great for the interviewees either, as they’re contradicting themselves one sentence to the next or their entire sound bite will be filler nonsense.

Also a problem is just the technicals on the “primary sources,” like the fake photographs of the scientists working on time travel. Also I was waiting for the home movie camera to get introduced earlier in history since there’s a sequence with it in 1941 or something and then the technology apparently gets worse when they get into the home movies of the sixties. Though whatever filter they use to fake the eighties videotape is great.

Back to the photographs. They’re not good fake old photos and, even more awkward, Daniel W. May is terrible. In the still photos. Some of it isn’t his fault—presumably, maybe the pipe was his idea—but every photo has him mugging for the camera. And unfortunately it’s not even the most unlikely bit of the “historical” photos—there’s a bunch of stuff with Elizabeth Lestina (as his wife) where it’s unbelievable there’d be photos taken.

The movie’s front loaded with this material, waiting for the gimmick to save it, but at some point—before the gimmick—it gets very tiring for the movie just not to be trying very hard. Outside the gimmick and the definitely good implementation of it, Kennedy’s got no ideas. He’s got some enthusiasm about time travel so long as charts can explain it—the charts disappoint—but none for, I don’t know, character or history, which wouldn’t matter if History were aping a forty-two to forty-eight minute special and not running seventy.

If it were shorter, the obvious production deficiencies wouldn’t be as much a problem. May’s “performance” would still be a pitfall, but maybe if he and Kennedy had agreed on a tone.

So in spite of the laundry list of flaws… Kennedy and his cast pull off the gimmick with aplomb and make History an extremely qualified success.

The Monuments Men (2014, George Clooney)

The Monuments Men is cute. It probably shouldn’t be cute, or if it should be cute, it should somehow be more cute. But it’s fairly fubar. The film’s got very little dramatic momentum since it can never find a tone and also because its scenes try to skip over the drama or do whatever it can to avoid it. It’s competent. It’s occasionally well-acted. Some aspects of the writing are okay though maybe not. It’s not an incompetent script when it comes to the scenes, the film’s just edited in such a way any scene with attempts at character development completely flop because no one has a character.

The film is about the Allied efforts to recover fine art after the Germans stole it during World War II. George Clooney—in addition to directing, co-producing, and co-adapting—is the ostensible lead. He’s the one who presents the idea at the beginning, then he ceases to have any dramatic relevance. But basically he puts a team together and they try to save Art History 101 from Hitler.

The team is a reasonably eclectic bunch of recognizable actors, including Matt Damon to ensure some box office, Bill Murray because Clooney (very wrongly) thinks Murray can make something out of a nothing role, John Goodman, Bob Babalan, Jean Dujardin as the French guy, and Hugh Bonneville as the British guy.

Performance wise… Bonneville’s the easy winner, then probably Cate Blanchett as Damon’s contact in Belgium, then Damon, then Dujardin, then… Goodman? Murray and Babalan are supposed to be beginning an unlikely but beautiful friendship and have zero chemistry together. Like, there are some okay sight gags with Babalan but… they’re sight gags. They’re way too easy and Babalan is clearly not trying. Murray seems actively bored (it’s kind of hard to blame him) but Babalan’s a close second for disinterest.

Everyone else tries. Though Clooney’s phoning it in, which is a big problem since he’s occasionally narrating and gets some monologues you’d think he’d want to do at least another take on, both as an actor and the director.

Dimitri Leonidas plays their translator. He’s good.

The film pairs off most of the cast—Damon and Blanchett, Goodman and Dujardin, Murray and Babalan—for a bunch of adventures, sometimes involving recovering the art, sometimes bad, lengthy jokes, sometimes danger.

But it’s all kind of trite, something Alexandre Desplat’s score annoyingly reminds every few seconds. With some exception, the entire cast is interchangeable. Their specific art history jobs don’t even matter.

And while it’s obviously based on true events… only one of the characters hasn’t had his name changed so it’s not based on true events enough anyone would want to be accountable for historical accuracy so Clooney and co-writer, co-producer, and cameo co-star Grant Heslov really should’ve found some drama in the film.

Though Clooney’s missing a lot. Like any sense of scale. In addition to being incapable of directing the ensemble cast.

Monuments Men seems like a project where everyone decided it was “good enough” at some point without ever finding “good.” The plotting—you can’t even say the script because it’s hard to believe cause and effect escaped Clooney and Heslov so something must’ve gone wrong later—but the plotting is meandering, pedestrian, and amateurish.

A good score could’ve probably held it together, but Desplat’s score is not good at all and it works against the film.

If it weren’t for Clooney being such a multi-hyphenate on the project, you’d think he was forced to do it under contract.

And that end cameo is a big fail. It’s “cute” but pointless and ineffective. Just like the movie.

Time Lapse (2014, Bradley King)

While I do not have much if anything nice to say about Time Lapse, including not liking the title, it’s somewhat admirable director and co-writer King and producer and co-writer Bp Cooper were able to keep it going for an hour forty. They sort of faked it past the ninety minute mark, sort of into actual indie territory but also not. Because despite being able to get that hour forty from a movie with three characters and two locations. Guest stars are infrequent and brief. Jason Spisak’s questionably Russian bookie shows up the most but it’s not like Spisak helps the movie. More actors wouldn’t help. In fact, having Amin Joseph and Sharon Maughan just around a little bit, they seem a lot better than they might if they were doing more.

The most surprising thing about Time Lapse is it isn’t Canadian. It was not filmed in Canada. Danielle Panabaker is not Canadian. I watched “The Flash” for five years; always assumed she was Canadian. Lead but second-billed because he’s not on “The Flash” Matt O’Leary. Also not Canadian. Very surprised. George Finn—who basically does a Kyle Gallner impression, which is a very strange approach to one’s acting choices but whatever—he’s not Canadian. I think I’m giving Canada an undeserved bad rap these days. Canadians make “Kim’s” and “Schitt’s.” Americans do not.

Anyway. My probably stale distrust of Canadian productions aside, Time Lapse is kind of… well, it’s basically Shallow Grave with a time travel MacGuffin thrown in to keep things interesting until the inevitable if not predictable—got to get it to the hour forty over the ninety minutes—plot twists in the third act. King and Cooper, as writers, have some good broad concepts and no idea how to execute them in the script and the ideas they do confidently execute, particularly in the third act, are where the movie loses whatever goodwill it’d been passively culling for eighty-five minutes. O’Leary has a few good moments. Not the monologues or the big eureka moments, but he does have some decent to solid moments of acting. He doesn’t seem miscast. Whereas Panabaker and Finn are both quite obviously miscast. Finn’s just terrible. I mean, yes, the dialogue’s atrocious and the character relationships lack requisite depth but Finn’s still pretty terrible. Panabaker’s just terribly written and miscast. She’s got a really bad part. It’s frankly inconceivable King and Cooper could pull it off. Any of it really.

Including believably costuming and making up Finn.

With a higher concept, Time Lapse might be watchable—if long (after a mind-numbing first act, the second bounces back hard and is genuinely engaging for a while). Or a better cast. Or better filmmakers. Sadly it doesn’t have any of those things.

Though nothing is ever worse than Andrew Kaiser’s music. It’s atrocious and there’s a lot of it.

As Above, So Below (2014, John Erick Dowdle)

As Above, So Below is a combination of a Goonies rip-off, a Tomb Raider rip-off, an Indiana Jones spin-off (which might just be the Tomb Raider rip-off), and, I don’t know, either Blair Witch or every other found footage horror movie where the third act just decides it’s time for image overload in lieu of narrative.

But for the first one and a half acts, following “We Called Your Grandpa’s Dog Indiana” archeologist Perdita Weeks (basically if she weren’t terrible, the movie could be at least solid until the third act but she’s terrible so it doesn’t matter from go) as she tries to find the Philosopher’s Stone underneath Paris. Presumably a London-based sequel would have them looking for the Sorcerer’s Stone across the Channel. Wokka wokka.

The opening is her recording herself adventure archeology-ing in Iraq. Apparently the camera is in the hijab. One thing about Dowdle’s direction—it’s more inept than bad. Like Dowdle and cinematographer Léo Hinstin have no idea where to place the cameras to get the camcorder feel. Especially once they start using “pen cameras” in their headlamps. It doesn’t help the documentarian—oh, right, in the story proper Weeks isn’t filming herself, she has a sycophant cameraman Edwin Hodge—it doesn’t help Hodge is both bad and poorly written.

Then there’s Ben Feldman as an Aramaic scholar who breaks into historical buildings and repairs their features for the benefit of mankind. Feldman’s not good but he’s really, really likable. Watch “Superstore.” Not instead. Just watch “Superstore.” Also, obviously instead.

Then there are the French catacombs climbers… François Civil, who constantly looks like he’s surprised they’re making a real movie, punk damsel in distress Marion Lambert, and finally Ali Marhyar, who gets the least to do in the movie and is—consequently, it seems—the best. Always good when Marhyar gets a moment. They’re never bad.

There are ghosts of dead little brothers, dead dads, dead friends. There are scary French hipster witch covens. There is Weeks—after not getting anywhere near as much male gaze throughout as one might expect from the genre—finally down to her tank top and slick with blood.

The script, by director Dowdle and Drew Dowdle—based on the ineptness of the script, they’ve got to be related—seems like an elongated second act sequence in a tent pole movie. Like one where Indiana Jones’s granddaughter comes across the last Goonie and they go for an adventure.

Sadly, no sign of One-Eyed Willie, but they do find the Last Crusader. Oops, spoilers. But not really because you shouldn’t be watching As Above, So Below, because there’s “Superstore.”

Backcountry (2014, Adam MacDonald)

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.