River of Doubt

Deliverance: adapted by James Dickey and John Boorman from the novel by Dickey; directed by John Boorman; starring Jon Voight (Ed), Burt Reynolds (Lewis), Ned Beatty (Bobby), and Ronny Cox (Drew) (1972): James Dickey and John Boorman's nightmarish canoe trip continues to resonate more than 40 years later as one of the greatest horror movies ever made. It evokes horror in the white-water expanses of the river the four unfortunate Atlanta men canoe upon, and in the claustrophobic nooks and crannies of the forests and cliffs that surround that river. Through these spaces move men who are comfortable within them, and men who are assuredly not.

The acting of the four primaries is superb, with a charismatic turn by Burt Reynolds as the only outdoorsman among the four, and with nervous, overwhelmed performances by new-to-the-screen Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox. As the conflicted protagonist ("Now you get to be the hero," one injured character mumbles), Jon Voight is smart and emotionally overwhelmed. It's as raw and varied a performance as his great work in Midnight Cowboy.

I suppose there are obvious subtexts to be mentioned, most notably the idea that this screwed-up, violent misadventure in the Great Outdoors can stand in for America's contemporaneous follies in Viet Nam. The movie rewards such interpretations because it is wholly itself in its horrors -- at no point are we asked to believe that this is a story about anything other than four city slickers on a vacation gone bad.

The horrors include grievous bodily injury and rape and murder, all framed within the context of an increasingly hostile natural world that hints at the supernatural. The human antagonists could just as well be orcs or some of Lovecraft's inbred human monsters. But they have ties to the world outside, and because of that, the authorities can't be trusted, at least not anywhere near the river. These monsters have suspicious, angry relatives.

The return to civilization is signalled by a rusting vehicle. A taxi gets delayed by a church being transported away from the soon-to-be-inundated banks of the river, which is being turned into a lake. For the surviving characters, there will be nightmares and guilt and at least some doubt as to what actually killed one of their number -- and, perhaps, a dead and bloated hand rising from the water. Highly recommended.

Into the Woods

The Ritual by Adam Nevill (2011): Four British friends (Luke, Dom, Phil, and Hutch) who first met in university 15 years earlier decide to go camping in Sweden for their 15th anniversary reunion. Tensions start to run a bit high, as Luke begins to chafe at what he feels is the derogatory attitude of two of the others to his low-income, high-freedom lifestyle. But when the group finds an animal so mutilated as to be unrecognizable hanging fifteen feet up in a tree, social frictions gradually start to seem less important. Something is out there, and they are lost because the most competent of them decided to try a short-cut. Oops.

In the small but sturdy sub-genre of 'camping trips gone wrong', The Ritual is a humdinger. Nevill has a sure hand with characterization, giving all the characters reasons for their behaviour, and eliciting sympathy in the face of whatever it is that's out there just beyond the firelight.

One of the things that elevates The Ritual above the run-of-the-mill is Nevill's careful attention to describing the problems of navigating a forest that hasn't been navigated by people for hundreds of years, if ever. His characters are pursued through a forest that has reduced their speed to a near-crawl. Whatever it is that pursues them is never seen clearly. And the forest seems only to want them to go on one specific path -- to a moldering house, an ancient graveyard complete with an ancient dolmen and a passage graveyard, and beyond.

There are glimpses of something in the trees improbably big, and sounds of trees crashing down in the distance. Food and water run scarce. Two of the four are injured and unable to make good time. Night keeps arrving too soon.

Nevill acknowledges the influences of both fiction and non-fiction work -- this may be one of the first novels to owe a debt to both Into the Wild and Arthur Machen's "The White People." But this is a striking work on its own, perhaps in need of a bit of trimming in its second half, but overall a riveting horror novel. Highly recommended.