A Lonely Place to Die - Scotland apparently

So normally these days I go and take a punt on films on Wednesday. What with the Orange Wednesdays offer and all. Last Wednesday though I was being all geeky at home, so I went to see 'A Lonely Place to Die' on Tuesday instead. Luckily Odeon have got an offer going at the minute where you can get 40% off (almost) all tickets at any time simply by printing out a voucher from their website. Kerching! £5.39 for a cinema ticket? It's like being a student all over again!

6 people were in Odeon's 6:30 showing of 'A Lonely Place to Die' (two of whom seemed intent on having a conversation throughout until asked to desist), a poor showing for an interesting British-made horror genre flick starring Mellisa George. George was in 'Triangle' and has apparently been in a lot of TV. I'm informed that she nearly landed the part of Lara Croft, and so I assume she has been teetering on the edge of breaking through as a big star for some time. Here she plays Alison, a climber and hill-walker who is out with a group of friends to scale some of the heights of Northwest Scotland. We start out perched on the side of a cliff-face, which Alison and her friend have a near miss on when one of them falls before being saved. The camera pans around the beautiful yet harsh wilderness of the remote Highlands, it's being made obvious right from the start that nature is the enemy here.

Or is it? The plot moves along very quickly as the walkers (after a bunch of stodgy 'getting to know you' scenes) discover an Eastern European girl buried in a box in the ground. Very quickly the film shifts pace, as Alison and her friends realise someone must have done this and that they're probably nearby.

"A Lonely Place to Die" has a number of nice shifts like this. Firstly when it switches from 'nature is the enemy' to 'people are chasing us', and then again when it moves from a rural to an urban environment and introduces a gangster element. There are a good number of deaths, blood and guts and all the kind of stuff you should expect from this kind of film. Overall a solid film in a genre that I've enjoyed a lot over the years.