This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist.
A film that echoes the wandering of its protagonist to disquieting effect.
Synopsis: Lennon, a new back-country ranger, travels alone through the dangerous wilderness, hoping to uncover the origins of a tragedy that has haunted her since she was a child.
Director and writer Teresa Sutherland is no stranger to narratives of isolated women, having penned The Wind (2018), which focused on stories of frontier women being driven to insanity by the sound of the wind. In her directorial debut, she follows a similar thread, taking the numerous disappearances at American National Parks as a starting point for her protagonist’s trauma and a fertile ground for horror.
Lennon (Georgina Campbell) is a new park ranger in the Avores National Park. As she arrives, she’s struck by the vastness of the area but also her traumatic connection to the space. With that history bubbling under the surface, the darkness and uncertainty threaten to overwhelm her.
From the outset, Sutherland establishes the park as a living, breathing space, namely in an opening scene in which another ranger leaves a note at their cabin stating ‘I owe this land a body’. The emphasis in the ranger training on respect for the forest, the notoriety of the park for disappearances and the film’s ability to continually pull back to show the scale of the area initially set out a tension that the rest of the film heavily relies on. A conspiracy podcast that plays during a scene adds to this, providing a sense of genuine threat.
A creaking soundscape surrounds the landscape as the camera tilts around it, creating a genuinely disorientating experience. These scenes during the day set the scene for the nighttime, in which the camera gives way to more intimate tracking through the woods, leading Lennon down sinister pathways to unusual figures. It is genuinely absorbing and Georgina Campbell, as her performance in Barbarian proved, makes for a performer you want to follow.
Exposition is carefully woven into the plot, mostly dialogue-free, which lends it a certain sophistication. As the film progresses, it wants to throw more and more at the viewer, abandoning some of the more serene creeps it originally lays out for something more layered. The relatively short runtime exacerbates this somewhat, with a jump from the scene setting to a more energetic final section. It is, mostly kept from spinning out of control, but some of the ways it folds in on itself are perhaps not as satisfying as they could be.
Ultimately, Lovely, Dark, and Deep is a strong directorial debut for Sutherland and demonstrates an excellent handling of the material related to isolation, grief and connection to land.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Lovely, Dark, and Deep screened as part of Fantasia International Film Festival 2023.
scaredsheepless 