The Reel Review
More than 20 years after she experienced a traumatic incident at a national park in Northern California, a woman haunted by that childhood memory gets a job there as a back-country ranger. But what starts off as an attempt to reconcile her murky childhood trauma becomes a journey that has her questioning her sanity. Georgina Campbell stars in this horror/thriller.
In her directorial debut, writer/director Teresa Sutherland incorporates a chilling score with lots of trippy upside-down visuals and overhead drone footage to create a creepy, claustrophobic vibe. The park, it turns out, has a long history of missing persons. And the longer she is there, the more unreliable our protagonist’s experiences become.
Campbell (Barbarian) does an excellent job carrying the movie, despite a strange screenplay that is slow and muddled and lacks focus. Sutherland clearly knows how to create a creepy vibe – it’s just a shame that this style-over-substance horror has so little to say otherwise.
REEL FACTS
• Teresa Sutherland’s writing credits include the 2021 mini-series Midnight Mass and the 2018 horror/mystery, The Wind.
• English actress and model Georgina Campbell will next appear in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2024 horror The Watchers.
• Although set in Northern California, Lovely, Dark, and Deep was filmed in Portugal.
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