FANTASIA23 REVIEW: Lovely, Dark, and Deep [2024]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 87 minutes
Release Date: February 22nd, 2024 (USA)
Studio: XYZ Films
Director(s): Teresa Sutherland
Writer(s): Teresa Sutherland

I owe this land a body.

Writer/director Teresa Sutherland hits the nail on the head when speaking about the sense of foreboding nature holds. Fond stories about camping with her family as a child possess the nostalgia of pure joy because one doesn’t know any better at that age. If you’re with your parents, you’re invincible. There’s nothing to worry about because they wouldn’t have taken you if there was.

Then you fast-forward to adulthood and all the possibilities for tragedy suddenly flood your vision. The reality that a cold snap could freeze you in your clearance sale sleeping bag or that a wild animal could snatch you away without warning becomes paramount above any innocently idealistic fantasy about basking in the beautiful landscape. You aren’t in control in such an uncertain environment. You’re simply trusting that your luck will win out.

It didn’t for Lennon (Georgina Campbell). She was that child—she and her sister. Unfortunately for them, however, the stark horror of the forest revealed itself much sooner than the rest. Rather than find out as adults, they experienced the nightmare of losing themselves right then and there in the blink of an eye. Jenny was gone and Lennon was left crippled beneath the weight of survivor’s guilt for not having protected her from something she could not see or understand. So, she devoted her life to never failing again, becoming a park ranger to prevent future disappearances and, perhaps, to find Jenny’s remains.

While the idea of such a tragedy is scary in its own right, Sutherland takes it one step further in Lovely, Dark, and Deep by adding intent. Before we hear the conspiracy theories about granite fields in Arvores National Park and the countless people who’ve never returned once stepping foot upon them, we meet Varney (Soren Hellerup). A park ranger himself, he exits his cabin in the backwoods of the preserve to write down a message as his supervisor attempts to get through roll call. Instead of declaring his presence, Varney simply keeps walking until all we can see is what he wrote: I owe the land a body.

What an ominous introduction to this quietly intense drama it proves considering his replacement is a young woman who lost a body to that same land so many years ago. What then will Lennon find? Answers or more questions? Will she discover that the solitude makes people go insane or that the theories are correct? That it isn’t a coincidence so many hikers go missing in US National Parks? (Sutherland’s director’s notes dare us to look it up if we “don’t feel like sleeping tonight.”)

The best way to know for certain is for someone else to disappear on her watch. Then we can see exactly what happens: how the rangers (led by Wai Ching Ho’s Zhang and Nick Blood’s Jackson) react both in the recovery mission and the aftermath. And since that opening prologue with Varney all but assures us that there is more than meets the eye happening, we can assume Lennon will be faced with a choice herself. Will she refuse the land its body or help its cause by letting another Jenny get forgotten?

Her response comes in the form of a lengthy journey through the recesses of her own mind. All the regret and pain Lennon has held onto since Jenny disappeared mixed with the presumably darker events that followed as she and her parents attempted to move forward. With some decent jump scares and a sufficiently moody atmosphere, you should get caught up in the shadowy labyrinth Lennon is forced to walk with disjointed voices and images pushing her to acquiesce with terror’s whims.

The result might not tread new territory insofar as aesthetic or thrills, but it does present an intriguing choice of which Campbell does well to expose its difficult psychological conundrum. Because in the end, we are trespassing. Humanity is the interloper on ground it doesn’t fully comprehend on the best days and hubristically ignores on the worst. Who are we to sabotage its desires? Because maybe those lost aren’t victims. Maybe they’re merely our penance.