Raindance Film review – Loner

Raindance Film review – Loner

Charlie Robb – who co-directed with Douglas Tawn, wrote and is solo onscreen for 97% of a 100 minute film – takes on a lot with Loner, a cabin-in-the-woods (‘more of a glamping pod’) found footage horror which is basically a character study (the title hints at what kind) with a Celtic take on wendigo mythology (a handy book of folklore gives some significant clues late in the day and the protagonist muses that he could have done with this earlier).

Angus Mattock (Robb), a few days shy of his thirtieth birthday, has won a suspect online promotion and is spending a week or so in the Northumbrian wilds, far away from civilisation and any amenities.  Paradoxically, he is at once doing a digital detox and putting cameras up all around the site so he can put together a vlog about the experience – the footage we see is edited (it’s later explained by who) but includes many snippets we know Angus would choose to leave out (spearing a bought fish he then pretends to catch for the camera) and quite a bit of brittle, jolly patter which we suspect hides major issues.  Angus says his parents have gone to Australia for the sun and that his girlfriend was killed in a road accident, but may be making up versions of these relationships for clicks or to make his lonerness more mythic and less pathetic.  He’s not entirely alone – Eve (Kat Johns-Burke), a student, is surly when their paths cross … then turns up wounded and hysterical one night, and Angus shoves her away, sending her off to her fate in the woods.

Odd items – a Celtic cross, strange stones, bones – turn up and the woods have that Blair Witch maps-are-useless elasticity, and significant items – an axe, a lighter, boots – are stolen from Angus, even as the water and power shut down … forcing him to make a hash of survival stuff like firelighting, foraging and DIY medicine.  One or two questions are left up in the air – why doesn’t Angus ever review the woods-cam footage of nights when the cabin seems to have had a visitor?  But the performance works, and the woods have a nicely serene, sinister look – using mostly fixed cameras contrasts with the familiar found footage shaky cam.  It doesn’t take the expected out, and the last act goes deeper into character than usual – with a nicely-ambiguous, yet coherent underlying mythology.