Body at Brighton Rock is a 2019 thriller about a park ranger who spends the night guarding a potential crime scene on a remote mountain trail.
As a movie plot, writer and director Roxanne Benjamin‘s feature length debut Body at Brighton Rock is surely something different, which for whatever reasons, deserves some attention. I mean, it’s gotta count for something. Either way, while the film is darkly comedic and has a certain flair about it, there’s a gap in the approach that tends to leave the film in a kind of limbo in terms of what it wants to do and what it actually accomplishes.
Wendy (Karina Fontes) seems to us not exactly the responsible type, arriving late for her morning meeting as a ranger at the (fictional) Brighton Rock National Park. It’s not the first time of course, but she’s no slacker, and to make amends, switches duties with her friend to take the more difficult job, attempting to prove she’s got value. Not a good idea it turns out as she heads into the deep woods for light trail maintenance and along the way, loses her map … as one does in such stories. Soon well off the mark, she’s mounted a summit that concerns her friends as they view her selfies. Not sure where she is, she then finds a dead body, and radioing in what she’s found, is told it might be a crime scene and so she needs to stay, even as her phone battery dies and it’s getting dark … and cold.
From the opening shots and on-screen titles, you might not know what kind of movie you’re getting yourself into, the fun music ironically trying to either poke some fun at or misdirect you from the genre the film seems to be in. So too is the early establishing shots that kind of feel like the start of a romantic comedy. Naturally, things quickly change once the happy-go-lucky Wendy finds herself in the middle of nowhere with a corpse her only companion.
It feels like Benjamin is toying with us, and where she finds the most traction with that is the constant wavering tone, having the film dip into several tropes that steer us into corners that never feel secure. Is this a horror film? Is it a thriller? A black comedy? A metaphorical treatise on being a woman? We’re not sure. The movie itself keeps you guessing. However Wendy believes it the first, Fontes on screen for nearly the entire show and playing it as if she’s neck deep in a 90s slasher film. It’s entertaining for sure, even if the imbalance ultimately dulls some of the impact.
If you’ve spent anytime alone in the woods, camping, hiking or whatever, you’ll no doubt pick up on the many visual and auditory clues laid as traps along the way. It’s both a bit jarring and equally amusing, though it’s too bad Benjamin can’t quite sell the madness of Wendy’s descent into hell as sturdily as it seems primed for. Don’t misunderstand. There are some good moments here, especially in the last act at night when the darkness conjures nightmares, both in her mind and very real. A scene with a bear in fact is almost reason enough to call this a success. No matter, if anything, this remains solid proving grounds for the director and her star, piquing curiosity for what they’ll do next.