Nowhere To Hide

For about half its running time 'A Lonely Place To Die' is fantastic: weird, unexpected, exciting. It slowly becomes more of a conventional action thriller, however, and although it never becomes boring, it can't sustain the disquieting mystery of its beginning.

Filmed in the beautiful wild parts of Scottish Highlands around Inverness,it begins with a dizzying near fatal mountaineering accident, then takes a strange turn when the climbing group discover a pipe buried in a remote part of the woods. The pipe leads to a large wooden box and the box, horribly, to an imprisoned ten year old girl. The girl can't speak English, so she is unable to tell them how she got there, but it is clear that she's not playing hide and seek. It's also fairly obvious that the people behind her interment didn't want her to be found - oh, and they must be completely amoral, ruthless and extemely dangerous bastards.

The rest of the film details the group's desperate attempts to get back to civilisation, all the while pursued by two thwarted kidnappers who will stop at nothing to get back their 'property', including killing everybody they come across. 

Genuinely thrilling in places, the narrative doesn't run out of steam so much as slowly drift off the beaten track and find itself on the main road and heading towards a relatively straightforward destination. It has style, though, and much else to recommend it. It's also more likely to be on a telly near you soon than our usual fare, so you can check it out for yourself although, please note, I do not rewrite stuff if you don't agree with me.