Bright Hill Road

Bright Hill Road

This is another example of film having the potential to be amazing if only for a higher budget and better special effects. I was intrigued with the concept of the movie.

After arriving at work drunk and avoiding death at the hands of a man she fired, a woman tries to find a way out ... Real interesting psychic journey down the river of alcohol abuse. Or is it? I'm not being clever, because this movie, for all its flaws, uses a lot of skill in generating a truthful mystery behind the vague reality. It starts with an ordinary portrait of the alcoholic, which is then blown wide open by a violent event, leading to the heroine's attempt to escape her horrible situation. She fetches up in a boarding house, where events turn weird, and every attempted escape from there ends in her getting drawn back in. That's the set up, and it's done with varying quality. Early on the cinematography ain't up to much, with crude framing, poorly handled focus (sometimes experimental), and unimaginative lighting. Yet there's one beautiful shot of the heroine's terrified face on the pillow, with her eyes in shadow; and an interesting reverse-angle cut through a wine rack that creates the effect of the heroine taking fright at both the opportunity for alcohol and the sight of herself, which plays into the repeated mirror motif - kudos to the editor. The music and sound effects are a bit obvious. The direction too is clunky in parts, in need of more thought at the storyboard stage, and relies on effects that are too explicit early on. But it settles in for the ride, and there are many imaginative touches that fill out the heroine's bizarre world, such as the wine bottle tags and the guest register. I think the story finds its feet when the third character is introduced, with an excellent performance that provides a stable frame. The lead actress goes through a good range of drunken behaviour, from self-confident assertion in front of the mirror to haunted anxiety the next morning - although Emily Blunt still takes the Oscar for that kind of performance. The actress playing the proprietor is perfunctory in a limited part. The climax is fascinating, as the heroine begins to make sense of her situation, sorting photos on the bathroom wall, even as the threat closes in on her. I think the screenwriter must have learned a lot from David Lynch in how to present psychic events as regular narrative. So the notion of the hotel as rehab becomes more explicit, yet it seems just as much a trap as the heroine's own personal gin palace in her bottle strewn bedroom. And is alcohol the real problem, or an escape from something deeper? The final reckoning does wrap it up entirely, but for me it ducks the psychological truth by insisting that the vague reality, with all those violent deaths, was literal fact rather than a stand in for forces struggling within the heroine. Instead of coming to terms with herself, she says an act of contrition and submits to something external, which has unwelcome connotations of the God of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you watch Mulholland Dr carefully - which I guess was a big influence here - you find that nobody dies, and the strange story maps on to a tragic but ordinary life. Overall: Real interesting, probably a rewatcher.

So it was incredibly refreshing to see a thrilling flick with such a unique storyline. But on the other end, I feel like this is kind of its downside as well because that gave it just so much potential that it didn't deliver on. It was OK overall. My only real gripe is this, I still didn't really understand why in the world she stopped and stayed at this boarding house. Because you know, that's generally what we do in America when we're on a road trip, is stop at a boarding house for some time I guess.

Interesting progression, solid acting. No real violence and nips were blurred during a boring sex scene.

#BrightHillRoad what a film, Siobhan Williams Agam Darshi & Michael Eklund was exquisite, Awesome story by Susie moloney and Awesomely directed by Robert Cuffley I can't wait for the dvd release to go with walk all over me ferocious & Chokeslam.. 10 star rating.

After watching Bright Hill Road I knew it would have a low rating. Maybe it's because I'm a recovering alcoholic, but I loved this film, even though it was predictable.

Left quite the neutral emotion in me. The storyline was a bit silly; however, was good enough to make me stay until the end. Though the plot was not this movie's strength, I still could not predict the ending.

Following a traumatic workplace accident, a young woman placed on leave decides to visit her family across the country and decides to stop over a motel for a bit of rest and relaxation, but the longer she stays in the strange room the more she finds her sanity slip away as the events of the past continually come back to haunt her. There was a lot to really like with this one. The fact that it turns a rather simplistic and formulaic approach into a rather fun and gripping thriller. Shown to be grappling with addiction issues and an unresolved grip on the past before being afflicted by the trauma while at work, we're given a nice backstory to understand her psychosis from the start of the film. This goes a long way to understanding how the stay at the motel begins to affect her as the past trauma and grief over what happened in her life begins to get more pronounced, tying nicely together with her addiction issue to create a confounding setup that tests her sanity quite well. This builds up rather well as time goes on where she stays at the hotel long enough to have lost all semblance of reality based on the situation she finds herself trapped in and the mounting stress of being alone at the motel which combines together into an appealing, hallucinatory-styled series of scenes throughout here. This all builds ominously throughout the middle part of the film where it gets far darker in terms of on-screen imagery and the threat to her mental state that it's far more chilling than expected and serves quite nicely as a result. There isn't much really slowing it down, but it tends to grind to a halt when the creepy neighbor is also shown to be at the motel. While it admirably shifts before whether or not he's real or part of her psychotic mindset, the fact that they're scenes together aren't that crucial to the storyline and tend to feel like padding to stretch the running time out. The finale, as well, seems a little rushed as it seems to just rush into a resolution that doesn't entirely feel earned based on the build-up before-hand as this is figured out where it's going quite early on with very little of the moral intended to be taught being applied. Still, this isn't truly detrimental as these factors only end up lowering the film just slightly as a result. Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language.

After a workplace shooting puts alcoholic Marcy (Siobhan Williams, Welcome to Marwen) on leave, she travels to see her sister in California. Yet halfway there, she decides to stop for a couple of days at the Bright Hill Road Boarding House, where she loses touch with reality and confronts her past. Marcy may be clinging to sobrietry, but Mrs. Inman (Agam Darshi) leaves wine for her every night and the other tenant, Owen (Michael Eklund), may be pushing her further into the mistakes of her past. You know, I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you black out and wake up in front of a deserted looking boarding house, don't stay there. This was directed by Robert Cuffley, who also made Chokeslam, from a script by Susie Moloney.