Brightwood is a movie that I'm glad I knew nothing about when going in to it. I was able to discover things at a similar pace as the doomed protagonist duo, rather than have knowledge of what might be to come. Written and directed by Dane Elcar, this is a feature length version of his short horror film, The Pond, released in 2018. The thing is, watching this, I kept thinking how much better this would have worked as a short film, as it struggles to come up with enough ideas to fill its eighty five minute run time.
Dan (Max Woertendyke) and his wife Jen (Dana Berger - Orange Is the New Black TV series) are a married couple who are finding themselves increasingly at odds with each other. Furious at Dan's drunken behaviour at a workplace gettogether the night before, Jen has gone for a long run to let off some steam, with Dan joining her on the run, in the hope he can cool her down. Things begin to take a turn for the bizarre when they arrive at a local lake they have been to many times before. For some reason they are both unable to locate the woodland trail by which they got to their location, their confusion leads to panic when they realise they appear to be trapped on the path that goes around the lake. No matter what direction they go in they appear to always arrive back at the exact same part of the path, even trying to cut back through the woodland they just end up back right by the lake. Things take an even stranger turn when they start to glimpse a hooded figure in the distance who seems deaf to their pleas for assistance.
This had a real vibe of The Twilight Zone to it, and the opening act was by far the most interesting part of the movie. I thought it was a neat idea that the couple were so wrapped up in their melodrama that it took them a good while to realise something very odd was occuring. The film played out like a cross between Vivarium and Triangle, with this seeming like a woodland based version of that first one, but with the time travel loopiness of the later. Where this began to fall down was when the protagonists began to realise the horror they were trapped in. It led to large parts of the second and third act when they were just running around aimlessly. The introduction of the idea that there are versions of themselves from both past and future also trapped in the same location did provide some interesting moment, but the protagonists refusal to interact with these alternate versions of themselves (outside of a few scenes), meant it was still mainly just the two characters trying to carry the movie. The woodland setting led to a feeling of increasing boredom, with the characters not really thinking up any new ideas as to how to escape.
Hoping for any kind of explanation, there never was a true reveal of how they came to be trapped, though amusingly a random wild idea that Jen comes up with might actually have some merit. At its heart this felt like an analogy for being trapped in a doomed relationship. Years of resentment and irritation has led to a couple who know they really should not be together, but who are powerless to take the move to seperate. This can be seen in the characters attempts to escape the loop, but forever encountering themselves again when they try. No matter what they try, they end up back together, miserable and looking for a way to truly be free. With all their talk of one of the versions of themselves being the 'best' version of themself, the film does take a darkly comical turn, leading to an ending of a kind.
With just the two credited actors in the movie, Brightwood needed to have the momentum to keep its lean story going over a feature-length time frame. I'm not convinced it did, as I found myself yawning more than once, hoping for something new to occur, rather than, like the loop itself, things just going round in circles. Brightwood is out on DVD, and streaming on Amazon Prime.
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