[Panic Fest 2020 Review] Beyond the Woods is Incredibly Slow

You know that bathroom scene in Mandy where Nicolas Cage does that Nicolas Cage thing? He drinks from a bottle and simultaneously rages, psyches himself up and bawls over the events that have just happened. It’s full of manic energy and marks a turning point for the character.

Now imagine that scene, except it doesn’t take place in a bathroom and the not-Cage man drinks beer, silently ponders what to do, gently leans against a wall in consternation and then smashes a vase. Just as the bathroom scene sums up Mandy in a single long-take, this vase smashing is emblematic of the rest of Beyond the Woods: Slow, ponderous and anti-climactic.  

Brayden DeMorest-Purdy’s feature debut is set in 1993 after the apparent suicide of a woman named Laura Bennett (Christie Burke) and the disappearance of her brother Jack (Jeff Evans-Todd). At the center of the mystery is Laura’s husband Andrew (Steven Roberts) and as Beyond the Woods opens, he is in cuffs and under the interrogative eye of Detective Reeves (Broadus Mattison). Reeves believes Jack is still alive and that Andrew had something to do with his disappearance. 

So Andrew tells his story. He goes back to right before Laura’s funeral when Jack shows up at Andrew’s house. They sit very quietly at a table. They get drunk. They talk very slowly. Then sit in silence. And eventually Jack discovers Laura’s glasses and a handful of her teeth in a fire pit Andrew erected outside. So Andrew chokes him out, carries him out into the woods and chains him to a tree. “What was your plan?” Detective Reeves interjects into the story. And after a very long pause (one of many here), Andrew responds, “The woods can be a very scary place, Detective.”

If only.

Beyond the Woods is slow. I hesitate to call it a slow burn because, truthfully, the only thing that’s burning here is the fire pit Andrew burns teeth in . The majority of the film follows poor Jack, tied in the wilderness as he has to cope with his fraying nerves and worse. The “worse” being Andrew’s long, lugubrious, emotionless, stilted monotonous drawl as he explains everything as if it should lead to some grand epiphany that never comes.

The cinematography from Zach Zhao is filled with long shots and cramped close-ups, giving the film a very cold and claustrophobic feel. In another movie, it’d be chilling but here it unfortunately adds to the laborious pacing. 

The biggest problem is a lack of characters with, well, character. Instead, they are defined by simple traits. Jack, the sad brother. Reeves, the interrogative cop. Andrew, the problematically depressed man who killed his wife. For a film that reaches towards the two hour mark, I expected a slow burn deep dive into the characters and how this tragedy happened. Instead, it feels sorely one note and flat. One of the few times I’d enjoy Netflix’s 1.5X speed test plans. 

I hate talking poorly about an independent film from a debut feature director. Reading the movie’s Indiegogo page showed the heart and passion that went into it. A lot of tightening and editing could have probably produced a more interesting film.