When a couple has been together for a “stupid amount of time”, as in the case of Dan (Max Woertendyke) and Jen (Dana Berger), then breaking up is a difficult thing: years of shared history blur into bad feelings, anger obscures rational solutions and it can feel as if you’re going around in circles. In Brightwood (2022), this deeply unpleasant phenomenon is not only at the heart of the film, but it’s placed under bizarre kinds of pressure. ‘Going around in circles’ gets both a literal, and fantastical spin here.
We meet this troubled couple on a morning run: well, Jen is on a run, trying to clear her head of the embarrassment her husband caused at a works event the night before, whereas Dan is attempting an apology in motion. She makes her feelings clear by running harder than he can run; she deliberately chooses a trail he doesn’t want to do, but, doggedly, he follows her anyway. When the run lulls for even a moment, squabbles break to the surface. Clearly Jen is beginning to envision a future without this man in her life, and takes the opportunity afforded by this remote, people-free space out in the woods to make this extra clear to him. But quickly, Brightwood flips this moment’s opportunity into a distinct problem: this same remote, people-free space out in the woods soon begins to seem oddly unfamiliar, despite the fact that Jen knows this trail well. In fact, where is the trail? They can’t find their way back; they keep running into the same minor landmarks, even when they change their direction. And it gets worse: they each begin to hear strange sounds, and soon they each see a mysterious figure, blocking their way even as they try the same path they can see, again and again.
You can probably easily glean from all that there’s a metaphor at play here: the link between the same, inescapable route bringing two people back to the same point, over and over, isn’t a tough code to crack considering we already know how Jen – in particular – feels. But there are good elements here, particularly in how the film gets going: it wastes no time giving us a sense of this fraught relationship, and it achieves it simply, not opting for reams of opening dialogue and exposition to establish this. Jen’s podcast of choice – a show all about life after divorce – is more than equal to it, even though the audience only hears a few seconds. Similarly, the whole ‘going for a run’ idea is plausible enough, and offers a good reason for these two to head away from the trappings of their everyday lives – probably urban, middle class and comfortably uncomfortable, at a guess.
Director and writer Dane Elcar also takes the many opportunities afforded for bitter black humour, without sacrificing the realistic moments of pathos, cruelty and relatable mortification. It’s here that the film is at its best – in its quieter interactions. Where it segues into a few repetitions of the ‘accidentally bump into other character/SCREAM’ motif, and on those occasions where Berger in particular throws in some comedically-overblown facial expressions, the film’s at its weakest, but thankfully it moves on from that, or at least allows its humour to settle into being more verbal before it shifts away from the humour altogether. The increasing elements of strangeness and nightmarishness are welcome, adding extra layers to the film’s low-key plot and taking the film far more in the direction of straight-up horror. These kinds of symbolic horrors often run out of steam to an extent – it’s true here too – but the decision to do without explication in order to prioritise the escalating desperation of these characters is often effective.
It’s a simple enough idea, in essence; in fact, Brightwood is based on a short film, which can lead to trouble – short films don’t always step up to a full-length format very readily – but there’s just about enough here for a feature-length film and, despite a few minor issues, Brightwood does successfully hold up a carnival mirror to the horrors of relationship breakdown, with all of its deja-vu and inescapable dread reflecting back at us. You can interpret the ending as you see fit, but it seems like a deeply grim conclusion to me.
Brightwood (2022) premiered at Cine Excess in October 2022 and will be receiving its US premiere at the Other Worlds Film Festival on December 4th 2022. For more information, please click here.