Backcountry thrives in the close-quarter details: the verbal knife-pricks of a dying relationship, the jangling impact of the smallest sounds breaking silence, that dread certainty that you're completely lost and it's getting dark.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 28, 2015

MacDonald does quite well in his dramatic feature debut with solid performances from the cast. Backcountry is satisfyingly intense, although quite gory in patches.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 27, 2015

"Backcountry" inevitably brings on the bloody, but it finds atmospheric ways to depict how the bucolic hush of a nature getaway can morph into a survival nightmare for the unprepared.

| Mar 26, 2015

I already think twice about going in the ocean thanks to 'Open Water' and now I'll have the same problem with camping courtesy of this disturbingly brilliant feature directorial debut.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 24, 2015

A couple of weekend backpackers face off against man and beast in director Adam MacDonald's accomplished, blunt-force wilderness adventure.

| Mar 23, 2015

It's beautifully tense and well-acted - the kind of modest genre picture we don't see enough of these days.

| Mar 20, 2015

Apparently inspired by a true story that the movie made me very much not want to look up, which I suppose may be taken by some to be a token of its effectiveness.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 20, 2015

Just when you thought it was safe to stand up to a bear in the woods, this jarring indie horror drama will make you scurry back indoors.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 20, 2015

For most of its 91 tense, uneven minutes, "Backcountry" plays on your nerves like a kid flicking you with a rubber band.

| Mar 19, 2015

Backcountry is potent in its moments of sheer animal panic, reminding the viewer that humans, for all our advanced technology and intellectual vanity, are powerless against the faceless cruelty of nature.

| Original Score: B- | Mar 19, 2015

Knowing that the situations depicted in actor and filmmaker Adam MacDonald's Backcountry are based on "true events" only makes them more harrowing to watch unfold onscreen.

| Mar 18, 2015

On one hand, this kind of narrative serves to remind us that we haven't totally vanquished the natural world and it retains some of its ancient dangers. But on a deeper level, something more complicated and sinister is going on.

| Mar 18, 2015

MacDonald elevates Backcountry by couching what turns out to be a keenly observed relationship drama inside a horror flick.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 18, 2015

Backcountry is simply another paranoid cinematic reminder that exiting the beaten path is a course best avoided - or, at least, one that also requires taking some basic, common-sense precautions beforehand.

| Mar 17, 2015

After a surprising development, the film grows slack and sentimental, reverting to the survival-movie platitude about hardship making you a better human.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 17, 2015