Teresa Sutherland’s beautifully shot debut has you rooting for a park ranger investigating a disappearance, even if the ambiguity around malevolent forces grows tiring
Robert Frost fans will recognise the title of this psychological horror. Taken from the poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, the relevant lines run thusly: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. /But I have promises to keep, /And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles before I go to sleep.” This is a neat, if oblique, way of describing writer-director Teresa Sutherland’s debut film, which sees a newly minted park ranger head into the wilderness, after the disappearance of a young woman, to confront shadowy forces interested in stealing more than just your picnic basket.
The national park in question has a long history of various vanishings (but what desolate rural region of the US does not?), and the plucky ranger is also processing a personal trauma dating back to childhood (but what lead character in a 2020s horror movie is not?). Naturally, the disappearances and trauma will intersect.
