Albert and Devon retreat to a remote cabin to explore a connection sparked by a string of sexually charged messages on a dating app. Albert is a closeted husband struggling with the collapse of his heterosexual identity; Devon is a wounded soul who uses fleeting affairs with married men to shield himself from his past. As their bond deepens, reality begins to fracture. The forest won’t let them leave. Trapped in a metaphysical bubble, the men must confront the truths they’ve spent their lives avoiding… before the cabin consumes them both.
GRIMMFEST SAYS: The clue is perhaps in the title. Joe Fria’s smart, slow-burning, character-driven study of emotional damage, and the struggle to transcend past trauma takes the classic “Cabin in The Woods” scenario and sets it in a Rossettian “Willowwood”; a liminal dream space of regret and recrimination, guilty secrets, bad memories and thwarted desires, a nightmarish limbo from which escape seems increasingly impossible. Beautifully played, sharply and subtly written, chillingly claustrophobic, and ultimately genuinely heartbreaking, this is an intelligent, thought-provoking and subtly haunting film, which underpins its more traditional genre elements with intense emotional and psychological truths, to offer a powerful exploration of love and prejudice, closure and sacrifice.