A lonely place to die

Starting like a blend of 127 Hours and Buried, A Lonely Place To Die sees mountain climber Alison (Melissa George) and three friends stumble across a young Serbian girl buried in an underground enclosure high in the Scottish mountains. As they attempt to bring her to safety, they must survive not only the relentless chase of the girl’s kidnappers but the merciless terrain.
Capturing the Scottish highlands in all their beautiful, raw glory, director Julian Gilbey brilliantly uses the setting not only to create atmosphere, but a real sense of danger. As the climbers try to lose their attackers in the mountainous landscape, nature itself becomes yet another enemy. An opening scene where one of the climbers dangles precariously upside-down from a cliff-face is a terrifying, dizzying head-rush, shot masterfully with a spinning camera. It’s one of several affecting visual tricks in the film which create some truly breath-catching moments.

However Gilbey’s visuals take precedence over character development, and despite the efforts of the cast, particularly the incredibly creepy Sean Harris, they remain largely one-dimensional. And though the first half of the film is a brilliantly intense and visceral experience, when the climbers reach a festival-throwing town, the film loses all coherence and tension. Attempts to overcome the traditional cat-and-mouse formula by invoking some Scottish Wicker Man weirdness remain undeveloped, and numerous unforgivable plot-holes become all the more obvious. Hollywood must rue the day the mobile phone was invented, destroying as it did the wonderfully simple concept of being stranded without help. But in 2011, the filmmaker’s assertion that not one of the climbers have a phone with coverage – a problem oddly not experienced by the villains – or a car, seems lazy and ill-conceived.

As do most of the characters’ plans, and as Alison plays a large-scale and fatal game of Sardines that leaves countless victims in its wake, all to save a frankly dull little girl, Ed Speleer’s voice echoed through my head. “Maybe we should have just left her there.”