By Teri O.
The Girl on the Mountain (2022) is an intense but slow-moving thriller set against the inspiring backdrop of a beautiful yet rugged wilderness. Daniel O’Reilly plays Jack Ward, a former classical music conductor haunted by a crushing family tragedy. Overwhelmed by anguish, sorrow, and guilt, Jack escaped deep into the forest where he lives off the grid in solitude out of a pup tent and fights off daily impulses to end his life. Flashback scenes fill us in on what drove him to such a troubling condition.
I thought it was interesting that a classical music conductor would have so much outdoor knowledge as this guy does. It’s hard to believe he’s the same person. Now that he’s living off the land through hunting and fishing, his career aspirations don’t seem so important any more, as he struggles to understand what his purpose is in life.
The reclusive outdoorsman is given a chance at redemption when he finds a mute young girl (Makenzie Sconce) wandering alone in the woods. Fortunately, Jack had studied a little bit of sign language in school and they are able to communicate. If you know any sign language, you will like this movie for that reason.
As the two slowly learn to trust each other, Jack soon finds out that she is fleeing an abusive household and had witnessed a murder. A bond forms between the tortured man and the traumatized girl. However, the safety and security of hiding out in the mountains is short-lived as the girl’s vengeful father “Big Al” (D.T. Carney) and his posse converge on them. Jack quickly summons his instincts as a paternal protector in a face-off against the sadistic intruders.
Like I said, the movie is really slow-going in the beginning. Mostly a guy camping, hiking, and fishing in the woods. It picks up a little bit when the two main characters find each other, but even then it’s a lot of soul-searching and camping scenes. The actual action doesn’t start until the last 20 minutes and then it feels kind of sudden and rushed.
That could have been done on purpose to contrast the carefree, unhurried life in the woods with the cruel, chaotic life they had run away from. Or it may have been because a forest fire was raging to life in the area, and the production crew was racing to complete the final shots before it barred access to their location. (Yes, there really was a forest fire that forced them to speed up production!)
The Girl on the Mountain is a deep feeling movie that delves into heavier themes of guilt, grief, loneliness, and trauma. At the same time, it’s a gripping tale of redemption – and the path to redemption is never without pain. This heartfelt drama is not a Christian or faith-based film per se, but the main character does talk to God and plead with Him up on the mountaintop. Which is definitely Biblical, because the Bible tells about several people having encounters with God on mountain tops. Many of us feel closer to God when we’re on a mountain, and we can certainly see it in this broken man. At the end of the movie there’s also what appears to be a miracle.
The Girl on the Mountain was written and directed by Matt Sconce (Makenzie’s dad) and taken from a story he conceived with Christopher Mejia. The indie film was shot entirely during the pandemic in 2020. The movie was filmed in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, near Yosemite National Park. You can see that the granite mountaintop they are on looks a lot like the rocks in Yosemite. The location of Jack Ward’s camp had an elevation of 8,000 feet above sea level. The cast and crew hiked all of their gear in and they even stayed in tents while filming parts of the movie!
This film has excellent cinematography and breathtaking atmosphere and visuals in the scenery. The way Sconce shoots the scenic locations is stunning, and the early scenes allow O’Reilly the space to convey his character’s pain and loose grip on life. Also, the first moments between Jack and the girl are very effective in showing their shared fear and trepidation while also touching on our more human instincts of survival and companionship, and the bond that forms between two wounded lonely souls.
Maybe it’s because I watched this movie right after seeing all of the pro-Gaza protests at college campuses across the country, but one thing I kept noticing and couldn’t figure out was why does it look like the guy is wearing a Palestinian scarf???
The Girl on the Mountain is 1 hour 34 minutes. It’s rated R for some violence. Just so you know, normally I don’t watch R-rated movies. (I’m a Pure Flix fan.) But I came across this one on Prime Video and it intrigued me so much that I took a chance. I’m happy to say for an R-rated movie it wasn’t that bad, especially with all of its redeeming qualities. So I recommend this movie with the following cautions (and maybe a couple of slight spoilers):
The movie includes a few mild profanities like “hell” and “bastard.” A verbally abusive father calls his daughter “maggot.” Flashbacks show the girl’s father physically abusing her mother, and the girl witnessing a murder. There are bad guys with guns. A man is stabbed and strangled. A couple of booby traps are rigged up as a self-defense mechanism, with pointed sticks that stab people. The most distressing part of the movie for me was a close-up shot of a grief-stricken man contemplating suicide by aiming a rifle underneath his chin (but he couldn’t bring himself to do it). In a flashback, we see that his wife had already killed herself by taking an overdose of pills.
The Girl on the Mountain is mainly a soul-searching movie with a bit of action at the end. If you are interested in camping, wilderness survival, mountain scenery, sign language, or classical music, you will like it!
Taglines: You matter. You are powerful. You are worth it.
