Sam (Paris Peterson) grieves a profound loss. What that loss is is not precisely known at the outset of the film.  The first few minutes of Grieve are simply him on the floor in a fetal position weeping quietly.  This moment sets the stage for writer/director Robbie Smith’s style of storytelling – long, slow takes showing Sam, or the scenery, or the darkness.  One single shot of the sunrise in the woods holds the screen for three minutes and forty-three seconds. I get it – but it feels like overkill. Smith holds a number of moments, some of which are quite enchanting and mesmerizing, some of which seem overindulgent or do not actually serve the film well.

Sam’s boss tells him to take time off from work, since he is not actually working anyway, and his mother encourages him to “go to the cabin,” presumably a family cabin in a rural area.  As any horror film buff knows, going to a cabin in the woods, if not a death sentence, is at least inviting the horrors into your life, and Sam is no exception. What lurks in the woods is “the thing that feeds off the cold in your bones and the hurt in your heart,” and because his grief is so strong, it is going to get Sam, as the spirit of Sarah tells him.  Sarah (Danielle Keaton) – Sam’s wife or partner or long-term girlfriend (the film is never specific) – passed away the film finally tells us, and Sam’s love and grief are both overwhelming. Indeed, the theme of the piece is how grief is a monster that can also tear the mourner apart is not a new one, but this film explores it with a singular aesthetic and we witness the slow descent of Sam from one hell to another.

Sam runs into old acquaintance Ralph (Jacob Nichols) at the local store and the two connect and spend some time together.  He, and we, witness Sam’s mental coming apart – but we initially ask how much of what he experiences is real, how much is chemical (Sam drinks a lot and begins to take hallucinogens), and how much is simply the product of his grief-addled brain?  The film seems to imply that the entity in the woods is real, not just because the spirit/hallucination/memory of Sarah tells Sam so, but because we see Ralph slaughtered for not serving the entity’s needs in one of the film’s most effectively disturbing sequences.

In short, Grieve, like its namesake is slow, lingering, and sometimes frustrating.  The film, however, is very beautiful – the scene in which Sam wanders through the woods carrying a mirror, and then, upon reaching his destination, watches the snow eerily fall upward stands out as stunning cinema, and both Smith and his cinematographer Evan Henkel are to be celebrated for what is a beautifully shot, if not always particularly moving or scary film, and certainly an effective one.  Grieve is worth watching for the visuals alone, but the story it tells also has its moments.  And watch through the credits for a stinger that perhaps changes the ending a bit, or at least makes Sam’s journey perhaps more fortuitous than it seems when those credits begin to role. I look forward to seeing Smith develop as a filmmaker.