After the shrieking woman at the outset, the cruel temptations only ramp up from there—oh, the can of food that the makeshift lasso juuuust won’t reach—and soon build into psychological terrors so awful you can understand why the hiker decides to do what she does. We never get a good luck at whatever’s tracking her every move—or a sense of what it wants, or what sort of apocalyptic event has given it so much power. But as Chazelle tells Short of the Week, that’s kind of the point: “To me, horror clarifies what is truly important in our lives by stripping away the unnecessities. I love stories with simple yet imaginative premises that are approached in grounded, authentic ways. I especially loved the idea of playing with sound—I’m always particularly impressed by films, especially horror, that aren’t afraid of silence.”
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