Pitfall: A Survival Horror That Misses the Mark
In the new low-budget horror film Pitfall, director James Kondelik delivers a laborious and bombastic survival horror that feels like the cast of Friends strayed into Deliverance. The movie features a posse of supremely irritating victims ripe for the culling, with even the supposedly sympathetic characters bleating out their issues at length. It's a sweet relief when a maniacal woodsman, played by former UFC fighter Randy Couture, arrives to shut them up.
Plot and Characters
The story follows Ashley (Alexandra Essoe) and her brother Scott (Marshall Williams), who return to the forest where their parents died in a car accident after hitting a deer. They are accompanied by their respective partners, Charlie (Matt Hamilton) and Gwen (Jordan Claire Robbins), as well as the carping Lars (Richard Harmon). The group's lack of wilderness skills is exposed when Scott falls into a spiked hunting pit while fleeing from wolves—the very type of pit he had warned everyone about hours earlier.
Narrative Structure
Kondelik, co-writing with Victor Rose, attempts a mildly fractured structure. The film opens with a prologue showing an unrelated mother and child in danger from the woodsman, then intercuts Ashley and company's search for Scott with another manhunt and flashbacks to the parents' accident. One death is revealed through a camcorder recording, left sadistically for Scott to watch at the bottom of the pit. However, this profusion of perspectives is haphazard and only occasionally adds force to the main storyline, such as when Scott is flooded with guilty memories.
Melodrama and Gore
Pitfall follows a long, heavily signposted melodrama trail, from Ashley's alcoholism to her estrangement from Scott and Gwen, to her newly discovered pregnancy. Kondelik takes every opportunity to ladle out schmaltz after gratuitous decapitations, gougings, and centipedes burrowing into wounds. The overblown finale unites family therapy and gorehound strands as the demonic hunter does his atavistic worst, while everyone else competes to sacrifice themselves for each other, vocalizing their need to do so. It's like the Scary Movie franchise did a splatterhouse Last of the Mohicans skit.
Release Information
Pitfall is available on digital platforms now and on DVD and Blu-ray from 20 July.
