I was looking for something to watch this evening after work and noticed that it is currently available on Sky. My memory was jogged to remembering a trailer seen on cinema visits earlier this year. That trailer doesn't do it justice.
Vanessa is mourning the loss of her and her husband Alex’s son, Obi, who died a year previously in a car crash that was not the fault of either of them, though she seems confused over who was driving at the time.
They live in a very nice home, with Martel, Alex’s brother, effectively surrounded by forest and with a nearby lake and increasingly strange things start to happen. The men’s father had apparently thought the area ‘strange’, yet the film opens with only Vanessa seeming to experience such.
Although the couple have had counselling, she is withdrawing further and further from life. And then she finds herself facing herself in the forest, in a parallel universe.
It’s subtle and low-key for cinema sci-fi these days. In some ways very simply told, with no (discernible) special effects – and kudos to director Kourosh Ahari for that. But while it’s ‘sci-fi’, its core themes are loss, grief, and trauma, and they are very well and sensitively dealt with.
Very good cinematography from Pip White, and an equally good soundtrack from Josh Atchley and Denise Santos.
It is a three-hander, and the Hodge brothers play both the male roles (very well). But much here relies on Vanessa, and Danielle Deadwyler is excellent in the role, really catching the complexity of the emotional experience of loss, grief and guilt.
And the ending packs a surprising punch.
As I said – it's on Sky now and very much worth watching.
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