Crew
Director/Screenplay/Photography – Dane Elcar, Producers – Dane Elcar & Max Woertendyke, Music – Jason Cook, Visual Effects – David Willis, Makeup Effects – Roland Taylor, Production Design – Tom Cleland. Production Company – Pond Pictures/Noble Gas.
Cast
Max Woertendyke (Dan), Dana Berger (Jen)
Plot
A couple Dan and Jen go for a jog and take a trail around a lake. However, they find that the trail that leads back has vanished and they are caught in a loop endlessly running along the same section of track that always brings them back in a circle. At the same time, they see sinister hooded figures on the trail ahead and voices warning them to “run.” The other figures become increasingly malevolent and violent, attacking them. They then discover that the other figures are themselves and that the trail plays weirdly distorted effects with time.
Brightwood was a feature-length film from director/writer Dane Elcar. Elcar is the son of actor Dana Elcar, best known as the Thornton, the boss of tv’s MacGyver (1986-92). The film is an expansion of Elcar’s earlier short film The Pond (2018) in which he plays the sole character who becomes trapped along the same stretch of lake.
What takes you back in a big way as Brightwood starts out is just how much antipathy and dislike there exists between the couple. He tosses off insults such as “You make me proud that I’m addicted to porn” and she makes ripostes like “I think you’re gonna die alone.” It is one of the most caustic (and believable) relationships I have seen in some time – Dana Berger in particular gives a remarkable angry and bitter performance. It is a bold undertaking to serve up characters who are so unlikeable. And when you realise that Max Woertendyke and Dana Berger are the only two actors on the screen, it takes you back wondering where the film is going to go with things.
Brightwood turns out to be Timeloop film. When I realised this, the immediate comparison that came to mind was Groundhog Day (1993) and the surprisingly large body of films that draw on the basic idea of a day repeating itself over and over – see Source Code (2011), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Happy Death Day (2017) and Palm Springs (2020), among others. Most of these are in either in light comedy fantasy or romance vein but Brightwood comes more as a horror work. If there is anything you might compare it to, it would surely be the remarkable Triangle (2009) with Melissa George caught in loop of repeated events where dead versions of herself and objects kept piling up, or Isaac Ezban’s The Incident (2014) where characters are caught in a loop continually climbing a set of stairs.
Initially it only seems as though the characters are caught on the same stretch of trail in the woods. As the timeloop element becomes apparent with striking scenes where hooded figures run past, bump into them or yell “run” and they then realise that the hooded figures are themselves, Brightwood gets increasingly stranger and darker. There is the uncanny effect of seeing multiples of Dana Berger’s dropped earbuds turning up. There is a particularly jolting scene where Max Woertendyke sees Dana Berger killed by the hooded figure and then moments later comes across her perfectly alive and then slots into replay what we saw was an earlier scene, while being forced to mask his horrified reaction at what he just experienced. At this point, we realise that the film is non-linear in nature and is lapping over on itself in a series of branching timelines. The premise keeps going right to the fadeout by which time the film has fully entered over into horror territory.
Trailer here