Mercy Falls review – Highland horror aims to be a Scottish version of Predator – The Guardian
‘Oh and Rhona … keep in mind, the key is to by no means look again,” says sinister hitchhiker Carla (Nicolette McKeown), as she climbs a cliff. “You imply down,” somebody corrects her. Sure, we get the purpose, provided that half the characters within the movie are nursing previous traumas, from random acts of rural brutality to Center Jap fight theatre flashbacks. However such is the unsubtle approach of Ryan Hendrick’s overblown Highland horror; it may possibly’t accept merely being a stripped-down descent into wilderness atavism. It additionally chucks in an irrepressibly attractive crew of hikers, creepy Scottish folktales and gratuitous Homeric quotations for good measure.
The actual killer is the extremely implausible instigating incident. Rhona (Lauren Lyle) and buddies set off on to the moors to find the household cabin she has been bequeathed, regardless of grim reminiscences of the realm. However then tensions, particularly simmering sexual jealousy, rise after they lose their bearings and fight veteran Carla takes issues into her personal arms. It’s probably not clear why she takes such drastic motion, aside from the necessity – along with her insistence that they’re now certain collectively by this horrible occasion – to get these sorry daytrippers marching even additional in the direction of backwoods peril.
Mercy Falls makes fundamental errors of dramatic orientation: mistaking characters’ bedhopping designs for persona traits, letting them act irrationally in service of the plot (solo bathroom journeys, or instance, would appear like a no-no). However Hendrick does undeniably have a really feel for the terrain, filming the glens, crags and heaths lovingly in interludes between the bloodletting, sometimes utilizing the phantasm of a diorama, making lifesize issues look miniature, to queasy impact.
It inevitably boils all the way down to what you may name a Scottish model of Predator, solely with a girl in Gore-Tex as a substitute of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Carla’s unhinged, keffiyeh-wearing fugitive as a substitute of previous crabface. However no less than Carla has the great grace to knock off the ensemble in ascending order of appearing means, leaving this contrived trek resting within the regular arms of Lyle, who all the time underplays with an intriguing resoluteness.
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