The long tradition of Scottish-made or Scottish-set movies – from Whisky Galore (1949), Brigadoon (1954), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and The Wicker Man (1973) to Local Hero (1983), Highlander (1986), Braveheart (1995) and Trainspotting (1996) – has fallen fallow in recent years. And while Outlander has done its best to fill the gap, the most we can hope is Glasgow or Edinburgh being called upon as brief locales or as substitute locations in blockbusters such as F9 (2021) or Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023).
So, as a native Scot, I approached Mercy Falls out of a sense of duty. Anything more meant setting aside the odd notion that a movie set in the wilderness will carry the same dread in a horror scenario as the more usual claustrophobic setting. Or that short of a drug-fuelled bear, speedy surprise will be in short supply. And there’s a struggle in coming to terms with the MacGuffin, that a young lass and her four companions will set off to find a cabin whose whereabouts are largely a mystery and with nobody who can read a map.
Putting aside such misgivings, it’s a refreshing change from the torture porn / mad robots / occult offerings of the more recent Hollywood horror cycle. And since it’s mercifully not funded by government agency Creative Scotland no slavish need to turn backdrops into tourist promotional material. Not a whiff of tartan in sight, much less majestic peaks, and the grass, far from being a sweeping green, is burned an unattractive summer brown, though mists do appear to appear as if by magic and you will wonder how such an accomplished wee folk band just happened to be playing in a remote Scottish pub.
Our cast of potential corpses includes uptight heiress Rhona (Lauren Lyle) and her theoretical boyfriend Donnie (Joe Rising), sex-mad Heather (Layla Kirk) and her definite current Steady-Eddie boyfriend Scott (James Watterson) and opportunistic one-night-stand Andy (Eoin Sweeney). They are joined by bad-ass hitchhiker Carla (Nicolette McKeown). Tension in the early part is mostly sexual in nature, although you have to wonder if they will ever reach their destination.
As with Shallow Grave (1994) and television series Guilt (2109-2023) accidental death turns the trip into a nightmare. Tell the truth and five people go to jail as culprits or accessories, tell a lie and dump the body under a remote waterfall and everyone gets off scot free. Or that would be the case except ex-soldier Carla has escaped from a mental institution.
Some sequences appear to have escaped from other movies – climbing a cliff-face and crossing a ravine Indiana-Jones-style across a rickety log – but once the gore count rises it’s game on and the meek Rhona channels her interior super-bitch to take on Carla in a winner-takes-all finale.
The men are uniformly useless, the females the sexual or physical predators. And it’s realistic, too. While Carla has honed her killing techniques on the battlefields of Iraq, Rhona has to rely on more basic materials, an axe, knives, and petrol found in the cabin. Rhona, it turns out, is also handy with that Glaswegian thug’s weapon of choice, the bottle, but when she lays out her opponent with it, rather than break open the bottle and slash her opponent’s throat, she scarpers to a convenient cave where she has laid a “trap,” clearly forgetting that with the enemy at your mercy it’s darned foolish to run and give her another chance.
Still, this isn’t the kind of movie where slick characters think straight, otherwise why would the remaining fella, determined to demonstrate his dexterity, just think you could switch on an old-fashioned heavy-duty radio and yell “Mayday! Mayday!” into it and expect to be picked up. Nobody’s going to win an Oscar and the acting is generally at entry-level, eyes steadfastly revealing little of character, but by and large, it’s an acceptable low-budgeter.
Blame or praise Ryan Hendrick (Lost at Christmas, 2020), also co-writer with Melia Grasska in her debut. Nicolette McKeown (Lost at Christmas) is the pick but that’s mostly because she doesn’t have to emote much beyond lust and hatred while Lauren Lyle (Outlander, 2017-2022) is so emotionally drenched she has to occasionally shed a tear.
This will probably quickly end up on a streamer near you so worth a watch for taking a different tack to horror and as a pointer to future Scottish talent.
The Magnificent 60s 