A Lonely Place to Die

lonely place to die

The title and trailer for this film make it sound like a bog-standard independent horror: a group of friends in the mountains find something unusual and get involved in a deadly chase. I thought I had seen it all before. How wrong I was. The films set-up is very simple: a group of climbers, led by the Scottish expert Rob (Alec Newman) and including young American woman Alison (Melissa George), find a young Serbian girl buried in the ground as they are climbing in the Highlands. It soon becomes clear that the girl has been put there by two ruthless criminals (the ever-sinister Sean Harris and Stephen McCole). What follows in a taut, thrilling chase to the nearest village, as the criminals try to get the girl back. The plot is, as I have said already, pretty standard. So what makes the film special? Primarily, it is the climbing scenes, which are impeccable. I am no climber but to me they seemed realistic and importantly, they were very scary. Also, the falls that characters had were breathtakingly real-looking and were true heart-in-your-mouth moments. Another strength of the film is its setting. The Highlands of Scotland look amazing in this film, and as a Scot, I was happy that they looked so stunning. The isolation of the place also adds to suspense and genuine worry for the main characters. The acting is spot-on most of the time. Sean Harris should be singled out for a fantastic performance as the evil Mr Kidd, whose accuracy in the kill still strikes a chill down my spine. What was so perfect about the kills were their realism: every time they killed someone we saw the necessary blood, the necessary gore to threaten you and make you think, 'these guys mean business'. A key to good thrillers is that when a gun is fired, there must be consequences. I look to a completely different type of film - Captain America - and see bad guys shooting hundreds of times at the protagonist and missing every time. In A Lonely Place to Die, the villains shoot to kill - and they're very good at that. Lets face it, if a group of climbers were being shot at from nearby by good snipers, there would be a lot of casualties - and there are, so we keep believing in the film. The heroes are great as well, with their dialogue realistic and witty enough to make use care about them, and make us believe in them as real people. An overall strength of the film is this realism, which is 100% necessary for a good thriller. At one point I thought the film was going to morph into a Jack Bauer '24' esque finale, but instead it keeps that realistic edge, and keeps an interesting theme of chance running until the final scene. The film drags on a tiny bit, with an small, unnecessary twist at the end, but overall a really well-made thriller that should send the director/writer team of Julian and Will Gilbey to Hollywood.

Melissa George, AKA Australia's most underrated actress is such a force when she's on screen, she has a toughness that I've never seen in another actress, from last years Triangle to A Lonely Place To Die she consistently manages to own and drive a film no matter what kind of role. I will be honest, my enjoyment of this film was helped a lot by Melissas presence, the actual story itself to me seemed a tad stop start stop start, after a slow start it got rather good, then it kinda got a bit uninteresting towards the end, I think it's mainly because all of the characters seem like pretty lame people, and sadly I have to say the characterization of Melissa's role was very slight. The cinematography was exceptional, the cascading mountains make for a very different setting for a thriller of this sort and the overhead scenes were stomach turning at times, the rest of the cast are OK but none are really memorable, which is kind of good because you can just concentrate on Melissa :) I mean it is far from terrible, but it isn't super fantastic either, for a thriller it's OK, for and adventure survival film it's OK, all in all it's just OK. Fans of Melissa George should enjoy it though as she puts in another divine performance, someone write that woman an ultra violent action film already, she'd totally kill it. 5 stars for the movie and an extra star for Melissa. Enjoy!

I had high hopes and I wanted it to baffle and thrill and excite me, I really did. Instead I found myself cursing and muttering at the ludicrous implausibility of the storyline. If, as a member of a group of innocent mountain-climbers, you suddenly find yourself under attack from an unseen assailant above you, would you run into the most obvious place to be seen and keep shouting "Anna!" at the top of your voice? No, you would creep under cover and keep very, very quiet. At one point, there was the choice to take one route which was an easy walk of about 12 miles to go back or to take the other which was only 4 miles but risking life and limb by climbing down a really perilous drop. The 12 mile route would take a bit longer but would be risk free. Everybody was in OK shape for the walk so then why do the crazy thing? Didn't the producer believe that one of them might just realize, "Hmmm...whoever put her there might be a bit annoyed when we set her free, so we had better keep a look out for bad guys..."? Nope, not for one moment. And as for staging a Rio-type Carnival in the middle of a highland backwater, I don't think so. As soon as the dancing girl emerged, a local Kirk elder would have nipped out and thrown a woolly rug over her to cover her up before chasing the rest of the troupe out of town. And this was the problem throughout - the constant irritation that people just do not behave like that in real life unless they are really, really dumb or if the producer thinks that we are really, really dumb so we will accept it. It was impossible to develop any kind of sympathy for the protagonists because I kept wanting to give them a good slap and tell them stop being so stupid. It reflected a total contempt by the producer to credit the audience with a shred of common sense. And once that respect was lost,it was impossible to regain it because the implausibility hits just kept on coming. So, if you like aerial views of Scottish mountains, you will have a ball. If you like thrillers with a remotely believable plot, you will have a real problem with this one.

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