The Girl on the Mountain

Execution was awful. Just no common sense to a few details.

The girls acting was superb. Jack's character was trying to be a hard mountain man but yet a sensitive artist. It just didn't work.

Greetings again from the darkness. Jack Ward first appears as the conductor of an orchestra during a live performance. It seems to be going well until he declines a call from his teenage daughter, Melody. See, it's his day to pick her up from school. When he doesn't show up, she walks home. After receiving congratulations for the musical performance, tragedy and guilt strike Jack on the same day. And then tragedy strikes again. It's more than one man can take, and the next time we see Jack, he's on a mountaintop contemplating suicide.

Writer-director Matt Sconce delivers a story from Christopher Mejia, and much of it takes place in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Actually, the mountains and the shots of nature (filmed by director Sconce) are the standouts here, as it's terrain that we haven't seen too often on screen. As a conductor, Jack (Daniel O'Reilly) was the ultimate clean-cut professional. After time on the mountain, he a haggard, worn-down man with little reason to live. He carries a bullet in his boot for the day when he's strong enough to end things. One day, a mute girl steals food from his backpack. He tracks her down and since he (conveniently) knows sign-language, he learns the mute girl is running from a dangerous family situation. He calls her Aria (Makenzie Sconce, assuming her to be the director's daughter), and the two bond over skimming stones, fishing, and paper airplanes.

The tension in the story is twofold: flashbacks and the pursuit. Jack and Aria both have their flashbacks to bad times. Jack recalls his mistakes with daughter Melody (Sarah Dorothy Little), while Aria's dreams remind of her an unbearable life with her dad, Big Al. It's Big Al's pursuit of Aria that keeps her and Jack on the lookout. He's hunting her down since she was witness to his horrible action. There are two distractions here that deserve mention. The eye makeup on Mr. O'Reilly is downright creepy at times, while the orthodontic braces on Aria's teeth simply don't belong, given the deep poverty of her home life.

Mr. O'Reilly, young Ms. Sconce, and Ms. Little are fine in their roles, but the other supporting characters, though not on screen for long, are detrimental to flow. The story of redemption and awakening is really nothing new, but the mountainous setting adds a level of differentiation that keeps us interested. A strange ending leaves us wondering, what now?

Available On Demand beginning March 8, 2022.

This movie is like a suit with bad stitching. The most disappointing of it is the screenplay. So, given the screenplay, I would say that acting is OK most of the time, even though characters are barely sketched. I have to imagine the guilt and suffering of the man for loosing his daughter and to guess the emotion and the development of the bond and trust between the girl and the man, Big Al not really convincing, nor the fighting scenes, in the woods I would bet on the redneck, not on the orchestra conductor playing Rambo. Also the waitress at the end is quite hilarious getting scared by the knife.

Great movie! This film had excellent cinematography and breathtaking atmosphere and visuals in the scenery. There was chemistry between the performers as they told their narratives and the storytelling throughout the screenplay was enough to keep you interested and to care about the characters, for example like who they are and why they are there, and how there performances fits into the plot as the story unfolds. The performers as they played their respective characters caught enough of my attention to care about the story the director was showing through his director's lens. It is not easy directing a film that appeals to everyone likes.

Can't believe a film this bad can still be released in 2022. The writing was like a highschool project. The acting was incredibly forced and unbelievable especially the bad guys. Only the girl's acting was passable but that didn't make up for the atrocious writing and direction. I assume the writer and directer hold far left ideologies...that's the only thing i can speculate as to how a movie could be made so bad in these times of knowledge, talent and imagination. The forest is the only thing worth seeing in this film... wasted $8 on this....if i knew how bad it was, i wouldn't have spent $1. You know. You have no reason to waste your money.