Poster Artwork
Three friends, John, Julian and Paul, head out in to the harsh wilderness for a three-week survival journey with nothing more than a few supplies and a bag of peyote. The plan is to survive, hunt boar and commune with nature by taking the peyote but even the best laid plans are laid to waste and a simple slip-up leaves John mortally wounded. Now the two remaining men find themselves at odds as Paul is determined to bring his injured friend back to civilization while Julian wants to remain in the wild permanently.
As emotions run high and peyote begins flowing freely, Paul must run for his life and find a way to successfully evade an experienced survivalist in order to make it out of the woods and to freedom. Julian, on the other hand, has spoken with nature and its beckoned him home.
Backwoods survival films are a dime a dozen but many are still incredibly effective because, I believe, nature triggers primitive fears within us and forces us to face our mortality head on and that scares the pants off of us. Since the dawn of mankind, nature has always been our greatest enemy (besides ourselves) and subjugating it completely can indeed be an obsession for some people. Throw in a highly capable psychopath fueled by peyote-induced hallucinations in to the mix and you’ve got yourself the makings of an entertaining thriller.
Roze’s Deadfall Trail is a good flick, the locations were awe-inspiring, the characters all distinct and interesting and the theme of “man vs. nature/man vs. himself/man vs. man” but it does suffer, in my opinion, from the lack of a clear plot, questionable motivations and “film school” verbosity. For instance it wasn’t until later in the film that the film’s direction begins to take shape and even then it feels like an eternity to materialize. Concerning the motivations I mention, why would John and Julian agree to head out in to the woods, being the experienced woodsmen that they were, for a three-week excursion with somebody lacking even rudimentary survival skills? Such irrational actions from men that shouldn’t be just seemed to be a stretch, not to mention it turned the character of Paul into nothing more than a plot device.
Now the dialogue wasn’t horrible but there were some sequences that just felt totally unrealistic including a fireside chat that gets way too deep and philosophical for two woodsmen and a loud, brash, seemingly immature newbie. I just kept thinking, “Man that probably sounded great on paper.” Don’t take what I’m saying to mean the acting wasn’t up to par because that’s not so, it was wonderful and all the dialogue was delivered with sincere conviction but some of it just felt clunky.
I will say this, Julian’s “blood puddle” peyote trip looked amazing, recalling similar set-pieces in films like Antti-Jussi Annila’s Sauna and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising. I’m sure Roze’s budget was considerably smaller so kudos to cast and crew for crafting such a startlingly beautiful sequence.
This flick is definitely a sound rental as it wasn’t a bad film at all, it looked great and held my attention but I don’t have any plans to purchase this film so I cannot recommend a purchase.
