Rating: NR | Runtime: 84 minutes
Release Date: August 22nd, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Cinephobia Releasing
Director(s): Dane Elcar
Writer(s): Dane Elcar

Where’s the trail?

It wouldn’t be far-fetched to get frustrated with Dane Elcar’s Brightwood. I’m guilty of it myself. The reasons, however, aren’t about the film. They’re about me and my expectations. Because the desire going into a story about a married couple on the rocks is for them to find a place of acceptance if not reconciliation. Maybe they don’t end up staying together by the end, but at least they’ll understand that breaking up is actually in both of their best interests. We want there to be a lesson. We want the characters to better themselves by learning from whatever crazy situation forces them to finally confront the truth.

The first half of Brightwood unfolds with the sense that we’re approaching just such an agreement. Jen (Dana Berger) is rightfully pissed at Dan (Max Woertendyke) for embarrassing her at a work function celebrating her promotion. Dan feels guilty, but he’s hardly contrite. He knows that if he pushes hard enough and sticks in Jen’s proximity, he can poke a cathartic outburst of emotion from her so they can move on and uphold the status quo. So, he follows her on her morning jog despite being unfit to keep pace regardless of his hangover. He needles and annoys, attempting to conjure a laugh while ultimately pushing things too far.

This is when they realize something is amiss. Rather than run a couple circles around their usual pond to blow off steam, they discover circles are all they have. The path back to civilization has inexplicably disappeared, leaving them with nowhere to go and nothing to do but get on each other’s last nerve so that the safety switch to ignore each other and continue living their disappointing lives together evaporates. Without an escape to cool down and forget, they can only explode. Because if they really are stuck here forever with the person they cannot stand to be around longer than an argument, rage is all they have.

A lot of comparisons have been made to Timecrimes both for ingenuity on a small budget and overlapping timelines, but Elcar’s film isn’t quite utilizing time travel. Maybe it’s because I’m playing Until Dawn right now, but what happens here is more like a choose your own adventure wherein every choice impacts where the characters go. But rather than it be us making the choices for them to see how things turn out, Jen and Dan make those choices themselves. And somewhere along the way, they inevitably become cognizant of it—enough so that they begin to exploit and manipulate the other versions of themselves to survive.

Here’s where my frustration was born. The way Elcar initially utilizes that gimmick is very much in-line with teaching his characters a lesson. The more they’re forced to be together, the more honest and open they become to listen and learn. Jen and Dan get so far as to remember why they got married in the first place. It isn’t perfect (and never will be), but a mutual appreciation does exist. Instead of rewarding this personal growth with an escape, however, Elcar pivots towards horror with shadowy figures and piles of bones. It reductively seems like he lost the plot. That he didn’t know how to end things, so he added gore. I was wrong.

Not to give anything away, but Brightwood is setting up those usual romantic drama vibes with the intent to upend them. Elcar wants us to think Jen and Dan are good people. That they will either discover they do truly love each other enough to start anew or that they’ve simply grown apart and need to accept they’re only bringing each other down. He wants us to think that so he can show us how toxic relationships aren’t always a thing that can be fixed. Sometimes a toxic relationship is toxic because that’s what the couple wants.

He doesn’t therefore pivot to horror tropes out of laziness. He does so to prove the metaphorical circles of carnage we put ourselves through don’t always have an exit ramp. Whether voluntarily or not, we become comfortable in the chaos. We start craving it. Maybe versions of Jen and Dan can break the loop, but not together. Together only leads to more damage. More destruction. To stay and fight is thus to embrace the horror. The only thing some learn from recognizing that they desperately don’t want to die together is that preventing that fate means continuing to live together instead—suffering be damned.

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Max Woertendyke and Dana Berger in BRIGHTWOOD; courtesy of Cinephobia Releasing.