- Directed by Chris Cronin
- Written by Paul Thomas
- Stars Sophia La Porta, David Edward-Robertson, Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips, Bernard Hill
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 58 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMDRJdsLPk4
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was grim and moody and quite slow moving. It pulls you along though, and we didn’t think it ever got dull. Much of it takes place on an endless flat and foggy landscape which makes it all the more chilling when something strange pops up. And it caps off with a satisfying ending. We’d give it a thumbs up.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open up on two children arguing about robbing the candy store. The little boy distracts the shopkeeper while his friend loads her bag with snacks and runs out. Her friend doesn’t come out, so she goes back inside looking for him; the shopkeeper says his dad came in and took him. We see “missing” posters of the boy as credits roll. Many missing posters, followed by headlines telling us that a man was sentenced to 25 years for the crimes.
Twenty-five years later, Claire has grown up and talks to Bill, the boy’s father, about the killer’s sentence ending. They never found Danny’s body, so they couldn’t lock the man up forever; Bill wants to go up to the moors and search for Danny’s body. He complains about how the vultures from the news have hounded him for years.
Claire agrees to go with him and Liz to search the peat moss moors. They have a map and they’re systematically searching the whole thing, which is going to take many days.
We cut to an old interview with people originally involved with the investigation 25 years ago. People talk about the moors, where the bodies were supposedly hidden.
Claire talks to Mr. Thornley, an old friend who was in charge of the original search, and mentions that Bill still goes up there to search. He knows all about the moors and shows that the moors are much, much larger than Claire realized. “How could anything be found in this?” Thornley is confused why Bill is searching in that particular area. Claire goes to see Bill, who has a psychic (dowser) there pointing to areas on a map.
Bill, Claire, and Liz go back out for more searching, and Liz reiterates how dangerous it is here. It’s all very scenic in a really bleak way. Claire wears a GoPro and records the whole thing. It’s miles and miles of bleak, foggy, grassy, swamp terrain.
Claire falls into a ravine and hears the others calling for her. She finds a child’s shoe down there, and the others soon catch up to her. Bill looks validated. On the way back, Liz leads them past some kind of neolithic stone monument. Claire starts to panic about being lost, but Liz says they aren’t lost, and soon come to the road where they parked.
Back in town, the police aren’t much interested in the shoe, saying it doesn’t indicate anything.
Back to the interview shows, they talk about the man who was arrested for the crimes. They wouldn’t show the man’s face on the news, which made him even more scary to the public. He only got one life sentence, which is 25 years, but he must have killed many children.
On the next trip out to the moor, Claire has a vision, seeing Danny– No, just a dream. Bill invites Alex, his dowsing friend, over, and they argue about someone else who’s involved– Eleanor, Alex’s daughter. Bill explains to Claire that Eleanor tried to help them before, but there were… issues. Alex has never asked for any money, so he’s not a crook. He really believes.
Eleanor wants to try something different. She uses the dowsing pointer to go over the map and gets nothing. Then she touches the shoe that they found, and the pointer gets really obvious about a location.
It’s a long walk from the road, most of the day just to get there. Eleanor wants to go help, but Alex is not supportive of the idea. Liz packs a whole lot of safety equipment just to be sure. Alex tells Claire that this sort of thing always has a cost for Eleanor.
Soon, Eleanor picks up the spirit of a little girl on the moor. Something scares her, and she runs off– right over a cliff into a ravine. She’s obviously hurt, and Alex and Claire tend to her, but Bill starts digging where she fell and finds a body.
Four weeks later, Claire complains about nightly nightmares about the little girl’s face in the mud. They didn’t find Danny, but the body was enough evidence to keep the killer in jail for a long time; the little girl died three years before Danny, so the killer was at it for a long time. Bill, however, is still looking for Danny.
Eleanor doesn’t want to go back up there, but she talks about Thomas, who is her spiritual guardian and the one who “leads” her to things. She might be able to get Thomas to speak through her, something like a seance. Thomas says Danny is “dreaming in the dark” and moves the pointer to a very specific spot on the map, far from the road this time.
Everyone packs up and heads back out to the moors. They find another of those strange stone monuments out there. The archaeologists don’t know who made them, but they’re very old. It gets too late to continue, so they set up a tent and camp. Eleanor says Thomas is nervous, which is new for him. Even Claire says the place feels like she’s been here before.
It’s dark and foggy and quiet and very mysterious out there at night. Bill sees someone out there and gets stuck in a bog until Liz pulls him out. Eleanor and Claire have a long talk about Bill before they realize that Bill and Liz haven’t come back yet.
Eleanor starts screaming, and Alex’s eyes are glowing. Liz gets on her radio to call for help, but she gets a very weird response. They all hear many children screaming for help outside the tent. Things get very strange with Eleanor, and her eyes bleed. Alex runs off into the fog. The find Alex a few minutes later, and he says he’s been lost in the dark for the past hour; that wasn’t him in the tent. They see a group of sheep with no eyes in the darkness.
Morning comes and they see that their tent is surrounded by those stone monuments. Liz calls for help, and they airlift Eleanor to the hospital. Liz tells Bill that she’s had enough and won’t help in the future.
Mr. Thornley calls Claire and tells her to stay away from the moor. He says that the killer was taken out to the moor yesterday to lead the police to bodies, and he escaped somehow. The killer is loose somewhere in the moors. Bill wants to go back up there, and he’s got a shotgun.
Then we get a scene of Claire packing up and traveling, looking like she was leaving, and doing a podcast episode about coming to terms with what happened. Turns out that’s a false happy ending of something from before.
We flashback to the GoPro, which shows Bill leading Claire with his shotgun up to one of those monuments. A crazy sheep rams his head into the monument and dies. Bill talks about human sacrifices out here from the stone age who were buried and preserved in the peat. “There’s something out here, something old and terrible. You heard the voice in the tent.” She didn’t, but he says it was clear to him.
It turns out that Bill does blame Claire for what happened to Danny. They come to the spot that Eleanor indicated on her map that last time. “The voice promised if I came here, I’d get Danny back.” Claire thinks Bill has lost his mind. Suddenly, Bill sees someone in the fog and chases them with his gun.
Claire falls into a bog and slowly sinks as Bill returns. Several dead bodies rise up out of the bog as Claire sinks and Bill finds Danny.
Commentary
Everyone has very thick accents, and the version we watched didn’t have subtitles. Depending on where you’re watching it, try to get subtitles. They are very British, but after a few minutes, we got used to it.
It’s very slow moving, atmospheric, and moody. Really, the hopeless gloom and dankness of the setting are the biggest part of the film. The music and camerawork are really good; it’s slow-moving but not boring. There’s little horror at all until about 90 minutes in.
We liked it– it’s more moody than horrific, but it does a good job with it.