Locked in an Outhouse!
The screenwriters of "Secrets in the Woods" (a.k.a., "Off the Grid") cannot be faulted for lack of imagination. When Sandra meets Brant on the internet, the sparks fly, and Brant invites Sandra to his family home deep in the woods. The visit will turn into Sandra's worst nightmare.There was an effective contrast established between the hardscrabble upbringing of Sandra and her younger sister Becky versus the way in which Brant grew up with his father Langley and his mother Elizabeth. The former was such a desperate situation that Sandra basically raised Becky on her own. The latter was a tightly-knit family on the surface, but a horror story in reality.
The creepiest character in the film is the patriarch Langley who has co-opted his son to effectively kidnap a young woman in order to take the place of Langley's wife Elizabeth, whom he killed. Sandra is kept in chains and forced to cook for the father and son. In one of the most horrific moments, she is locked in the family outhouse.
This is hardly the Cinderella story that Sandra was imagining when she brought along a bright red negligee. The film's unpleasantness was hard to take in the slow-paced midsection. If the filmmakers were aiming for a style of dark comedy, then there was too much "dark" and not enough "comedy." There was also room for improvement in the sloppy fight choreography at the end when the women did battle with the men.
The film develops a theme of the powerful bond of the two sisters, who had learned survival skills growing up in a rough environment. Every one of those skills will be necessary to do combat with the forces of evil in one of the most repellent father-and-son duos imaginable.
It was surprising that someone as practical as Sandra would not have perceived more of the dark side of Brant after three months of dating. Her only takeaway in the early part of the film was that he had "good manners." It is difficult to imagine what their dates were like.
In the end, the best tagline for the toxic masculinity expressed in the film is an offhand remark from Brant early in the film: "The most dangerous animal of all is man."
score /10
lavatch 4 March 2021
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw6658998/34877
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