Three buddies on a wilderness excursion find themselves in dire straits after an unfortunate encounter with some local hunters. No dueling banjos here, but you get the idea. This indie, female-centric riff on “Deliverance” is spare, smartly written and shot through with moments of twig-snapping tension.
Sarah (Kate Bosworth) has tricked her two best friends, Lou (Lake Bell) and Abby (Katie Aselton, also the director) — who are embroiled in a longtime feud — into showing up for a camping trip with her on the tiny Maine island where they spent summers as kids. Reluctantly, the two agree to the reunion, and soon they’re all traipsing through the woods in search of their old buried time capsule, with Abby and Lou pausing to open old wounds and bicker.
A startling appearance by Iraq vet Henry (Will Bouvier), an old acquaintance of the women, leads to their hosting a drunken campfire that evening with him and his two ex-military pals (Jay Paulson and Anslem Richardson). Abby, who’s dealing with a troubled marriage at home, gets drunk and flirts with the obviously unstable Henry. What begins as a consensual hookup turns into an attempted rape, and Abby’s self-defense is more severe than intended, leading to a chaotic escalation of events in which the women find themselves on the run in what used to be a childhood idyll.
The efficient screenplay by Aselton and her husband, writer/actor/director Mark Duplass (“Jeff Who Lives at Home”), winks at women-in-peril conventions. A scene in which Abby and Lou shed their soaked clothes to warm up via body heat is stubbornly nontitillating, and one woman gives another a pro-violence pep talk worthy of the WWE. Aselton’s low-set cinematography gives a palpable sense of Sarah, Lou and Abby being hunted prey.
Not to demand too much realism — this is, after all, a movie that sees these slender, civilian women holding their own against war vets in hand-to-hand combat — but I was only taken out of the moment by one chat between two characters during a scene of extreme duress. Perhaps one could marshal the emotional resources to hash out a decades-old slight while naked, shivering and whittling a spear for defense against psychotic gunmen — but I kinda doubt it.