This horror-flecked backwoods Pennsylvanian fable should serve as a useful calling card for writer-directors Kevin Ignatius and Nick Psinakis, who summon up an ambience so oppressive, it’s as if the film is being beamed straight out of the deep, reptilian brain. The atmospherics and the plot’s occultish trimmings feel somewhat indebted to Panos Cosmatos’s 2018 film Mandy but this is an undeniably sharp technical exercise, in spite of its obvious shoestring budget.
A nerve-jangling prologue sees dark-haired siblings Henry (Carter O’Donnell) and Jacob (Brady O’Donnell) cable-tie their abusive father Duane (Michael Thyer) to a bed and abscond from his cabin on BMXs. They’ve got good reason: in one river-bathing scene, we see he once branded Henry with a clothes iron. After a tipoff from a gardening customer, they decide to head cross-country northwards, on the trail of the estranged mother (Trina Campbell) who they hope can lead them to a better life.
Deploying ominous drone shots of unbroken forestscapes, hallucinogenic lens distortions and PTSD-seared flashbacks to domestic horrors, Ignatius and Psinakis make this escapade indelibly subjective. Ignatius’s evocative scoring – ranging from Appalachian banjo to off-kilter electronics – takes things up another notch. One questionable choice is the flanging sound effect applied to all the dialogue; perhaps it’s meant to suggest trauma-induced emotional disconnect, but it keeps the brothers at a remove and muddies our comprehension of the story.
The truth is, though, there isn’t that much story to absorb aside from a few morsels: a mysterious sigil-marked rock Jacob finds, the infestation growing on Henry’s neck, and their discovery of what kind of company their mother is keeping. Ordered into one-word chapters (“Viaduct”, “Lake”), this elemental approach is intended to knit the whole into a kind of modern-day fairytale, but threadbare as it is, it feels more generic than archetypal. Luckily, Ignatius and Psinakis’s alert visuals and bruised mood help maintain a crisp mythic footprint.
• The Long Dark Trail is available on digital platforms on 21 February.
