- Directed by Shawn Linden
- Written by Shawn Linden
- Stars Camille Sullivan, Summer H. Howell, Devon Sawa, Nick Stahl
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzRhDvMO2c8
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s a wholesome movie about a happy family hunting and trapping and living off the land. Okay, it’s a little more complicated than that when there’s a wolf that seems to be targeting them. But wait, it gets way more complicated than that. The tension winds up nicely with a brutal ending. It was a really good one that slipped under the radar. We’d highly recommend it.
Synopsis
As the credits roll, we watch a father and daughter check their traps with their dog. They’re a modern-day wilderness family of trappers. It’s all going well until they find an animal’s foot in one of their traps. Something got the rest of the animal. “It’s back,” says the girl.
Anne takes a load of pelts to the store and sells them to the man inside. She looks longingly at the house-for-sale ads when she finds out she doesn’t have enough for groceries.
Everyone gets back home, and the father butchers the animals they brought home and explains how to do it to his daughter, Renee. Anne and Joe argue about the wolf, who has returned for some reason. “It’s attracted to us,” she argues. She also complains about not having money for food before winter comes. She wants to get a job and buy a real house in town. “People don’t live like this anymore. It feels like the world has left us behind.”
The following morning, Joe and Renee go out wolf-trap setting, and he knows all about wolves. At one point, he looks serious and sends her home with a gun back the way she came; the wolf is near. We then get a montage of him hunting and Anne and Renee running in terror from sounds they hear in the woods.
Joe gets the wolf in his sights and shoots. Was that wolf carrying… a human hand? Yes, it was. He tracks the wolf’s blood across the road, but he loses the trail. He keeps going until he finds a dead woman tied to a tree and several others naked and dead arranged in a clearing. They’ve been there for a while. Does he tell anyone? No. Did the wolf do that? No.
The next day, he goes back to the corpse-clearing. It’s clear that he’s not hunting for the wolf anymore. The wolf comes up on Anne and Renee while they’re fishing in the river. They scream and run back to the house. Anne goes back out to find their missing dog, which she soon does, but it’s too late for their pet. Anne doesn’t tell Renee about the dog.
Anne and Renee go out for food the following day, and the animals in their traps have been eaten by the wolf again. They find wolf poop, and it’s got someone’s wedding ring in it.
Anne goes to the police station and tells them about the wolf and the ring. They say that “Joe’s land” is really government land, and they’re living out there illegally. The officer says, “There’s nothing to be done; wolves are native to the area.”
They need food. Anne shoots a little baby deer and has Renee show her how to skin it. That night, Renee says the dog has returned, but Anne knows better. There is something out there, moaning in the woods. It’s a man, but it’s not Joe. Anne drags the man back to the cabin and does first aid on him.
The injured man, Lou, says he’s a photographer whose car broke down. He puts up a lot of protest when Anne wants to take him to town, so his story doesn’t really check out.
Danny, the police officer that Anne talked to, notices an abandoned car on the side of the road that was there yesterday, which he thinks is suspicious. He starts thinking about that ring, the abandoned car, and all the missing people from the area. He finds the same marks on the trees that Joe found, and he follows them.
He soon comes across the bodies, and no wolf or bear did that. He then steps into the biggest bear trap I’ve ever seen. And then puts his hand in another one. The next morning, Lucy, the other cop, figures out that the first cop didn’t check in and goes looking.
Anne goes out looking for food and finds Joe in the woods, dead. A wolf didn’t do that either. She immediately comes to the conclusion that Lou did it and runs for home.
Lucy stops by the abandoned cars and hears Danny shooting his pistol. She soon finds him in the traps and calls just about everybody to come investigate. They soon find a blood trail and start following it…
Anne gets home, and Lou immediately attacks her. Renee walks in on that and starts screaming. When Anne wakes up, Lou wants the keys to the truck. He grabs a can of gasoline and starts a fire outside. He comes inside to finish off Anne, but she hits him in the face with an animal trap, and that’s gotta hurt– a lot. She then goes into the next room and finds what’s left of Renee.
Anne hoists Lou up and pulls out the animal-skinning knives. He screams in agony as she smiles. Turns out, she’s really good at this backwoods stuff after all!
The police arrive at the cabin after it’s all over. Lou is still alive, sorta. Lucy is in awe of what Anne has done. Anne is still in shock.
As far as we know, at least the wolf lived happily ever after…
Commentary
It’s “Deliverance” meets “Life Below Zero.”
I think in this situation, if I found out that “Joe’s Land” wasn’t even his and that he’d been lying for years, that it might be time to pack up and leave a note, especially in this situation.
The problem here is casting Nick Stahl. At no point did I give him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn’t the killer. It was obvious, and it shouldn’t have been.
There’s not a lot of gore until the very end, but it’s totally awesome when it happens.
If you like nature horror, this is really, really good!