The Long Dark Trail: Review

1st March 2023

Henry (Carter O’Donnell) and Jacob (Brady O’Donnell) are brothers who live with their abusive father. Their mother is absent after joining a cult and seeing as her being the better option, the boys plan their escape, setting out on the trail to find her. However, the closer they get to finding her, the stranger things are as they start seeing things that aren’t there and experience things they never could have imagined as something dark takes over.

The Long Dark Trail is a coming-of-age horror movie about two brothers trying to find a better place. Although being stuck between a rock and a hard place, where they either stay with their abusive father or search for their mother who has joined a Satanic cult, choosing the latter must have been a terrible choice to make.

The movie itself plays like something along the lines of The Blair Witch Project and often uses familiar horror movie tropes similarly to The Dark Pictures Anthology video game series, so the audience may know what to expect.

Unfortunately, despite the stunning visuals and striking imagery, the story plays out all too easily and isn’t helped with the performances of its inexperienced central characters. This means that despite the O’Donnell’s being real life brothers, their connection isn’t played upon enough, opting to just recite lines of dialogue.

There’s also the issue of how the movie is split up, dividing it into chapters may suggest a story that’s better thought out, but by doing that it leads to a certain expectation from the audience for something to happen. Meaning that it feels like the audience are let down over and over again as the chapters are so short and nothing happens in them – at least for the beginning of the movie.

There is a good story in there and with a more experienced cast and a director that wasn’t so interested in showing off the visuals, then it could have worked better.

Something which could have been an emotional journey and a chance to bond its lead actors instead feels mechanical and ever so predictable instead.

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