Lost in the wilderness, a lone traveller stumbles across a cabin, deep in the woods. While anyone in their right mind would turn tail and run after being confronted by Stephen Lang at his creepiest, Ray (Mark Senter) nips in to warm himself by the fire. What is the shifty, paranoid Old Man’s game? And is there more to butter-wouldn’t-melt Ray than meets the eye?
As the pair settle in, tall tales are told. With Lang’s Old Man (not to be confused with the old man from Don’t Breathe, nor the Disney+ TV show currently streaming as we speak) holding the kid at gunpoint, and making jokes about poisoning the coffee, there’s clearly a power imbalance at play. Director Lucky Mckee’s (The Woman, All Cheerleaders Die) latest is a slow burn, but busy with his sense of playfulness and pitch-black humour. Well-fuelled by Lang’s typically intense performance as it is, Senter holds his own. The pair’s verbal game of cat-and-mouse gives the film its framework, while a brief but eventful diversion into the past provides its most arresting sequence.
As the pair wrangle with a curious shared detail in their stories, the film twists and turns into something entirely different. For a film about two men in a tiny cabin, there’s never a dull moment, though slick camera tricks, performance, and Joel Veach’s verbose script. From there it either gets silly or interesting, depending on one’s preference for such things – but it never gets old.
