- Sensibility: A scene with leeches and choices around travelling with a horse are confusing and feel out-of-place, but otherwise this grim story is real in a horrifying and gripping way.
- Cinematography: The landscape is far and away the highlight of this film visually. Incredible forest and mountains and plains outline the whole journey, contextualizing the story and giving the film a sense of space and time. Brilliant costuming and makeup/hair choices define characters and their states of being. Lighting choices are excellent, feeling natural and unnatural in perfect tandem with the natural and unnatural elements of the story.
- Energy: The opening sequence is so brutal and gripping that it could justify watching the remaining hours, but the rest of the film is such an incredible mixture of tragedy, violence, love, and friendship that is wildly entertaining.
- Narrative: Haunting, horrifying, heart-warming, tragic, humorous, and hopeful. It's unbelievable how well this unlikely combination of a revenge thriller with a story of friendship with a theme on race relations with a lesson in kindness with an exploration of nature is put together. All the characters are thoroughly defined to the point of shock in the antagonists' brutality and the protagonists' heart. The story is merciless in the darkness it explorers and beautiful in the lessons it shares.
- T-Points: The film received five bonus points: one for the tragic and brutal murders in the beginning, one for a set of dream sequences, one for her first act of revenge, one for her delirium in the woods, and one for a
brilliant end scene dancing, celebrating, and mourning on a beach.
I love this movie. I don't think I've ever seen a better revenge thriller, and this movie is even more than just that; it's also somehow a beautiful story of friendship, a story of exploration, and a lesson
on love and mercy.
Number of Watches: 2
