A Safe Distance

As Joey (Chris McNally) and Alex (Bethany Brown) drive out into the woods, the radio is playing. There’s a news report about a string of bank robberies across British Columbia, committed by a masked man and woman. Joey proclaims that it sounds romantic. Alex is ignoring him, trying to read her book, but she shoots him a puzzled glance, makes it clear that she disagrees. They’re in their mid-thirties; they’ve been together for eight years. She has no time for such nonsense.

The reason for Joey’s odd mood will reveal itself when, after they have set up their tent and hiked up the slope above it to a beauty spot every bit as breathtaking as he claimed it was, he abruptly goes down in one knee and produces a ring. But by then viewers will have seen enough to understand that this is a mistake. The two of them are not on the same page. The look in her eyes demolishes any doubt.

What might be harder to understand is Joey’s reaction – but people do odd things in moment of extreme stress like that. When she wakes up in the tent the next day, he is gone – just cleared out. This is a serious problem because Alex is not a regular hiker and she has no relevant skills. She does her best but soon finds herself in trouble, and is lucky to be rescued by a younger couple who are camping nearby. A man and a woman. It shouldn’t take you long to figure out why they’re there.

This isn’t a film about surprises. It’s a psychological thriller and, perhaps, a coming of age tale for Alex, whose life has been quietly suffocating her for a long time but who hasn’t had the headspace to think about alternatives. Perhaps she’s more romantic than she imagined. She is, however, not stupid, and as she grows closer to the couple – tall, muscular Matt (Cody Kearsley), and Kianna (Tandia Mercedes), a wiry young woman with a Rooney Mara haircut – the responsible adult side of her struggles to assert itself. A luminous sequence involving magic mushrooms contributes to the sense that they are in an enchanted space out in the woods, where nothing is quite real, but Alex is aware that it can’t last, and as tensions begin to develop between her companions, she can sense the danger in the air.

The question is, is she ready to be a little dangerous herself?

An accomplished first feature for director Gloria Mercer, A Safe Distance is well balanced and coolly confident. It will keep you guessing right up until the end – and perhaps, if the Fantasia audience is anything to go by, even afterwards, though the prize sought in those final moments may be something less tangible than they imagine. It’s a film with sex scenes in the beginning, middle and end – each one focused on Alex’s face, and each one very different – which encapsulate the story neatly by themselves. The whole thing is gorgeously shot by Devan Scott, making full use of the moisture in the mountain air, and Caleb Chan’s score adds a further touch of class.

Brown is superb. Scott finds a luminosity in her eyes which is both evocative and enthralling. As she splashes around, laughing, in the nearby river, or drifts through the trees by night, it’s easy to delight in Alex’s liberation, but ultimately it’s her shrewd intelligence that will come to the fore, and she will need every bit of it in a film where romance can take unexpected directions.

Reviewed on: 02 Aug 2026