A low rent Deliverance

Competent execution and respectable performances still can’t save this threadbare attempt at a minimalistic Deliverance, which arrives in limited release with only a 24-day window before Magnolia’s Truly Indie label blows it out to the DVD market where it really belongs. Grabbing pre-DVD publicity (as opposed to grabbing box office dollars) is Magnolia’s aim here; so tepid box office should be viewed at unsurprising and expected.

When Nick and Lori (Eion Bailey and Yvonne Strahovski) show up to honeymoon at the Grand Canyon just as spontaneously as they eloped in Vegas, it’s a perfect movie recipe for catastrophe. As any horror film buff knows being young, beautiful and blissfully happy always goes hand in hand with making stupid decisions, and Nick and Lori waste no time proving the point when they hire a crazy and possibly homeless old crank named Henry (Will Patton) to be their guide on a quaint little trip into the canyon. Naturally, the trip goes completely kaput—Henry gets bitten by a snake and dies, the mules take off, the phones don’t work, and on and on and on and on.

It’s a wonder that so many independent filmmakers still attempt to strain such premises out to feature length—as a Twilight Zone episode, The Canyon might have reasonably worked. As a 102 minute feature film, it’s overlong, gimmicky and, as the filmmakers strain to sustain interest with a series of escalating punishments for their characters, utterly unpleasant. There’s enough blame to spread equally between first-time writer Steve Allrich and second-time director Richard Harrah, though Harrah does deserve kudos for some competent staging, intermittently interesting visuals and decent performances—no small achievement given the contrived scenarios and undercooked stick figures which Allrich has provided him.

That the film is being theatrically released the same day as Lars von Trier’s more infamous Antichrist—another minimalist morality play about a couple whose journey to rural isolation turns to bloody and horrific excess—will only further damage its prospects. Audiences masochistic enough to choose either of these films will clearly default to the more notorious candidate, likely emerging so scarred from von Trier’s indulgence that any thought of exposing themselves to further such unpleasantness will vanish just as quickly as The Canyon disappears from theaters.

Distributor: Magnolia
Cast: Yvonne Strahovski, Eion Bailey and Will Patton
Director: Richard Harrah
Screenwriter: Steve Allrich
Producers: Mark Williams
Genre: Thriller
Rating: R for brief disturbing content.
Running time: 102 min.
Release date: October 23 LA/Denver