Realistic cabin-in-the-woods
Two girls grow-up in central Tennessee (Elizabeth Potthast and Kelsey Steele) when the latter goes off to college for a couple years. They decide to reunite at the former’s family getaway in the backwoods, along with a couple of other college girls (Kelly Bartram and Olivia Arokiasamy), but there are no modern conveniences and something menacing is in the air. Jacob Briggs is also on hand.
“Be Still and Know” (2019) is a family friendly Indie that tackles the cabin-in-the-woods genre. It’s thoroughly mundane compared to the typical movies of this genre, so don’t expect silent masked killers with machetes or mutant hillbillies. There’s a coming-of-age angle and I liked the subdued commentary on what schools of (supposed) higher learning do to students. It’s reality in modern Western Civilization.
I found one element of the movie frustrating because the paranoia that is worked up could be resolved simply by a certain person offering a few details. Yet this is adequately explained by the end so it’s all good.
The technical filmmaking is fine for such a spare change Indie. I appreciated the early birds-eye view of the region. Meanwhile the no-name actresses do fine with a well-written script that amusingly addresses social realities in the modern day.
I should point out that the title has zero to do with "I Know What You Did Last Summer,” as a couple of critics curiously complained. It's simply a partial quote of Psalm 46:10, but this is hardly "Christian propaganda,” as also criticized. Yes, two of the characters are Christians and there are a couple of tame prayers, whoopee. It reflects real-life in America (especially the fringes of Appalachia where the events take place).
At the end of the day, this is a worthwhile flick if you want a cabin-in-the-woods movie without the buckets of gore and eye-rolling (non)horror that instead focuses on realistic drama with a dash of spirituality.
Lastly, the bloopers at the end credits are fun, but tedious. IMHO deleted scenes like this should be relegated to the ‘extras’ section of the DVD or whatever.
The movie runs 1 hour, 23 minutes, and was shot outside Woodbury, Tennessee, at Yellow Bird Art Farm, which is just a mile or two southwest of the city. The college sequence was shot at Middle Tennessee State University, which is about 20 miles west of there in Murfreesboro.
GRADE: B-/C+