Upon the death of their father, who has been died after cutting his leg badly in the forest, Nell and Eva, two teenage sisters live in the distant house with their father in the forest, where they have been cut off from the world, and during their way back to their house, their car went wrong, leaving them stranded in the forest, struggle against survival.
Rozema's minimalist approach pays dividends until a final third hobbled by overdone effects and a thrashing musical score. Too bad. The story being told on the faces of Page and Wood has eloquence and power.
Such a scenario is provocative in an age of technological overload, but the screenplay turns into a muddled mood piece rather than capitalizing on its inherent urgency.
The director handles the fraternal relationship with warmth and security in the staging, both in the moments of conflict and in those more calm or minimally comforting. [Full review in Spanish]
Page and Wood, who are both in their upper 20s, hardly make for convincing teenagers, but they both lend weight to Eva and Nell's sisterly bond as the two siblings slowly unravel.
A film that becomes the dramatic tale of two sisters who don't know how to live together or separated and suddenly discover that the forest in which they live is much better than the out of stock supermarket in the city. [Full review in Spanish]
Wood and Page generate a believable, prickly sibling closeness in Rozema's unhurried but harrowing micro-portrait of how easily civilization could crumble.
A vision of the apocalypse as humanistic as emotional, that offers a painful and sincere look at the female universe of its protagonists and its hard beginning into adult life. [Full review in Spanish]
Walks a blade's edge between terrifying and uplifting... Rozema has a careful but unflinching eye when it comes to presenting the physical and emotional traumas the sisters experience.
Nell and Eva's relationship forms the heart of the film and, along with the fleeting moments of ecstasy they find in things previously taken for granted, their bond provides something of genuine beauty in a progressively bleak world.
