A sense of slow burning dread permeates throughout this low budget chiller set in Lancashire. An updated version of Don't Look Now, Lake Mungo and Picnic At Hanging Rock type melancholy and unresolved mystery is set up straight away with a startling opener that is both well done and creepy (though clearly not done in a single take; if it's what the director intended)?
David Edward Robertson effectively performs the grief and utter obsession as the father of the missing boy, the sound design is subtle and chilly with expert photography capturing the strange misty moorland.
Where I find the film,slightly, falters is the rather repetitive structure of the story with aimless visits to the moor with another ' seeker' to locate the missing child and an ending that is ambiguous to the point of laziness in the scripting- how did the father make the young woman go back out onto the moor? How did he coerce her? Why did she have on her camera? Was it to please the 'found footage' fans of horror? Whatever it is it didn't make much sense. And at under two hours the film is too overlong.
However it has played on my mind since I saw it and it bears a recommendation from me on the journey writer/ director makes for his future endeavours.
