Deadfall Trail (2009)

Directed by Roze [Other horror films: Speak No Evil (2013)]

I saw this once before, and it didn’t do much for me. Alas, it’s much the same now, and while I won’t say it’s god-awful, I will say that there’s little here of any interest to me.

Much like the expedition in the movie, the plot is pretty bare bones. Three people go hunting, tensions mount, stuff happens, and suddenly one of them snaps and starts trying to kill the others. I didn’t catch why exactly one of the characters suddenly become the antagonist (though it does lead to the ending scene, which is perhaps the best part of the film), so there could have been a better way to explain that.

Really, Deadfall Trail is an odd film. It’s very stark, minimalist, with a pretty realistic tone, which in a way is nice, but at the same time, it’s not very fun. At all. Sitting through this one is really a chore, as it takes a while for any action to pop up, and when it does, it’s not the most enthralling stuff (because, like I said, this film takes a rather naturalistic, realistic approach).

It was sort of cool to see a bunch of survivalist techniques (reminding me a little of the 1997 adventure film The Edge), but that wasn’t enough to interest me. Shane Dean did pretty well in his gruff role, but with the type of film that it was, his performance, as solid as it occasionally was, wasn’t enough.

I really don’t know what more to say about this one – it was just dull, without much to really cause it to be noteworthy. The vibe was interesting, and the horror elements almost muted until the end (if you discount some scary visions), so I’d probably not recommend this, nor would I watch it a third time.

4/10