By Robert Scucci
| Published 13 seconds ago

As a cardio junkie who eats an embarrassing amount of pizza throughout the week, I try to squeeze in a good workout every single day. During the winter months I hit the treadmill or exercise bike for about an hour. When it gets warmer, I love a good jog for some old fashioned Vitamin D. The difference between my fitness choices and the ones depicted in 2022’s Brightwood is that I can stop whenever I want because I’m not trapped in a time loop with a mysterious hooded figure following me around and trying to kill me.

For good measure, I also try not to get my steps in near creepy lakes with hidden access paths. I like blasting music in my earbuds, and I don’t want to find myself in a remote area, where a menacing voice in the distance is telling me to run away, which I would absolutely not hear.

A Low-Budget High-Stakes Time Loop Thriller

Though its financials are not widely reported, Brightwood was produced for an estimated $14,000, and it shows. Fortunately, its story is so simple and effectively told that it probably could have been shot for even less, though I am no accountant. The film has only two primary characters, Jen (Dana Berger) and Dan (Max Woertendyke), along with a couple of stand-ins who briefly appear when more bodies are needed.

Brightwood follows a married couple whose relationship is clearly strained, with an inciting incident the night before setting everything in motion. Jen is fed up with Dan after he gets drunk at a work party and flirts with his coworkers. She channels her rage into dragging him on a long run while he is violently hungover, not holding back when she tells him how unhappy she is and how they have been together for a “stupid amount of time.”

Dan comes across as the complacent, mildly incompetent husband who has taken his marriage for granted. That was my initial read, at least. But the longer Brightwood sits with them, the murkier it becomes. Jen looks perpetually furious, her scowl capable of freezing you in place. It is hard to tell whether she has always been this way, forcing Dan to retreat into himself and his drinking, or if his emotional laziness slowly turned her into a stone cold scorpion woman. If I had to guess, they are both contributing equally to their shared misery but are too afraid to admit it.

It already seems obvious their nearly decade-long union is on the brink, but then their world tilts sideways when they realize they cannot leave the hiking trail they are running on. The path out disappears, and there is no clear way home. Worse, a mysterious hooded man keeps crossing their path. He never gets too close, but when they hear him in the distance, the only word they can make out is “run.”

Devising A Solid Exit Plan

As time passes in Brightwood, Jen and Dan begin questioning how long they have actually been stuck on the trail. Clues pile up. After Jen drops her earbuds, they begin noticing duplicate pairs, then triplicate pairs, and eventually entire piles of them, suggesting they have been trapped in this loop far longer than they realize.

When they finally catch a glimpse of the hooded man, he bears a striking resemblance to Dan. This doppelganger Dan kills Jen, sending the real Dan sprinting off in terror, only to reconnect with another version of Jen who has no idea what just happened.

Jen’s solo experiences mirror Dan’s. She witnesses Dan being killed multiple times and even kills one of him herself in a fit of rage. When they reunite, there is no clear way to determine which version of each we are watching. There is no visual shorthand to guide you, which means there could be dozens of Jens and Dans wandering the trail, encountering the hooded figure, getting killed, and being dragged off to some undisclosed location.

Next Time, Just Use The Treadmill

Brightwood accomplishes a surprising amount with very limited resources. Its lack of flashy effects or obvious visual cues makes the experience disorienting in the best way. The only consistent sign that something supernatural may be happening is a piercing ringing in their ears that sounds like high frequency feedback or a dog whistle. They just keep running, occasionally spotting their equally confused duplicates doing the same thing on a slightly different timeline.

A lean, tense psychological sci fi thriller, Brightwood belongs in the same conversation as Coherence (2013), Primer (2004), and Empathy, Inc. (2018), all of which prove you do not need a massive budget to create something deeply unnerving. A strong concept, committed performances, and a willingness to let the audience sit in confusion can go a long way.

As of this writing, you can stream Brightwood for free on Tubi.