Brightwood review – enterprising sci-fi horror sees jogging couple caught in a loop | Film

A plucky microbudget indie, Brightwood is a masterclass in what is achievable with hardly any money whatsoever: just a premise, a couple of actors, and a writer-director (Dane Elcar) who doubles as cameraperson. It’s also an illustration of the limits of the form, because it would be starry-eyed and untrue to claim that money makes no difference to what can be achieved.

We open on a couple, jogging in the woods and fighting as they go. Jen (Dana Berger) and Dan (Max Woertendyke) have evidently been married for long enough to really get to know and dislike each other. She’s listening to a podcast about how to divorce, he’s irritated she won’t take her earbuds out long enough for them to have a conversation, she’s furious about his drinking and flirting and, on top of everything else, he’s wickedly hungover. Their interactions have a painful, circular feeling to them, each loop of their protracted argument landing a staccato rap on an existing bruise. You want to pull them out of it, but can’t. They’re so wrapped up in their own toxic dynamic that it takes them a while to realise they are caught in a loop in more ways than one.

Here’s where the film enters into more surreal territory: Jen and Dan find that there is seemingly no way out of the circular path around a pond in the woods which they’ve been navigating. They keep finding themselves back where they started, quite literally. These kinds of time loops or impossible spaces may be a fairly standard feature of sci-fi, but the dovetailing of the glitch with the psychological landscape of the characters is what lends it a little bit of the heft of something like Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel.

Unfortunately the characterisation is also trapped with the limitations of microbudget film-making, which requires that the script and two actors carry the entire weight of the film. There’s nothing especially wrong, per se, with either the writing or the performances, but a film with more resources has more options; you can support the actors and dialogue with other elements, say, a juicy turn from a favourite character actor, or add some knockout set pieces or production design. Here, we’re essentially locked in with no change of scene, just like the characters; and there are moments where that becomes an endurance test in the wrong way. Nevertheless, this is intelligent, scrappy film-making that should lead to bigger things for both cast and crew.

A plucky microbudget indie, Brightwood is a masterclass in what is achievable with hardly any money whatsoever: just a premise, a couple of actors, and a writer-director (Dane Elcar) who doubles as cameraperson. It’s also an illustration of the limits of the form, because it would be starry-eyed and untrue to claim that money makes no difference to what can be achieved.

We open on a couple, jogging in the woods and fighting as they go. Jen (Dana Berger) and Dan (Max Woertendyke) have evidently been married for long enough to really get to know and dislike each other. She’s listening to a podcast about how to divorce, he’s irritated she won’t take her earbuds out long enough for them to have a conversation, she’s furious about his drinking and flirting and, on top of everything else, he’s wickedly hungover. Their interactions have a painful, circular feeling to them, each loop of their protracted argument landing a staccato rap on an existing bruise. You want to pull them out of it, but can’t. They’re so wrapped up in their own toxic dynamic that it takes them a while to realise they are caught in a loop in more ways than one.

Here’s where the film enters into more surreal territory: Jen and Dan find that there is seemingly no way out of the circular path around a pond in the woods which they’ve been navigating. They keep finding themselves back where they started, quite literally. These kinds of time loops or impossible spaces may be a fairly standard feature of sci-fi, but the dovetailing of the glitch with the psychological landscape of the characters is what lends it a little bit of the heft of something like Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel.

Unfortunately the characterisation is also trapped with the limitations of microbudget film-making, which requires that the script and two actors carry the entire weight of the film. There’s nothing especially wrong, per se, with either the writing or the performances, but a film with more resources has more options; you can support the actors and dialogue with other elements, say, a juicy turn from a favourite character actor, or add some knockout set pieces or production design. Here, we’re essentially locked in with no change of scene, just like the characters; and there are moments where that becomes an endurance test in the wrong way. Nevertheless, this is intelligent, scrappy film-making that should lead to bigger things for both cast and crew.