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If only it were as easy as in a Broadway musical. But no, no, the World Premiere of James Kondelik’s Pitfall (2025) insists on being much more grueling than that—both physically and psychologically—as five friends embark on a camping trip that turns into a wilderness full of booby traps, including the titular pitfall; a hunter’s trap flimsily covered or camouflaged specifically intended to capture animals or—in this gorefest—people. Did I mention that this pitfall has sharpened spikes as well? And did I mention that the hunter who set this snare is a relentless mentally-disturbed murderer?
A well-worn scenario of young campers being hunted in the woods by a hooded madman is given a fresh run for its life through sincere performances, laminated and overlapping narrative tracks both in the past and present, and an insinuated theme that pitfalls, snares, and traps lie as much in unresolved traumas of the past as in the strategies used to overcome them.
Siblings Scott (Marshall Williams) and Ashley (Alexandra Essoe) have become estranged after a horrific accident kills their parents. Scott—forced to make a choice between saving his mother or saving his sister—chooses his sister who cannot forgive him for his choice, which was—in and of itself—a form of pitfall, as in a hidden or unsuspected danger or difficulty.
Guilty about his choice and blamed by his sister, Scott and his girlfriend Gwen (Jordan Claire Robbins) invite Ashley and her fiancé Charlie (Matt Hamilton), and Scott’s best friend Lars (Richard Harmon) on what they hope will be a conciliatory outdoor adventure to bury the hatchet. Little do they know that the hatchet will be hurled at them by a stranger in the woods seeking vengeance for the pitfalls of his own traumatic past.
What makes this thriller succeed is its gruesome and torturous kills, inventively staged by Kondelik, with great outdoors cinematography by Robert Zawistowski intensely edited to breath-halting effect as our protagonists endure one savage pitfall after the other. Special effects by Yan Emond and Robbie McInerney, augmented by visual effects by Outlanders VFX and MOD VFX, add shocking viscerality to the wolfish pertinacity with which they are hunted down, one by one.
Adding a supernatural note by film’s end, the Hunter (Randy Couture) appears to be unwilling (or unable) to die, though he can certainly inflict pain and certain death on others in perpetuity and adds a particularly grueling affect to his hunting by being perhaps one of the worst archers in cinema history. He ratchets up the tension by wasting more arrows that you can possibly count. The film’s closing credits offer up multiple kills that the Hunter has scored up over time if those specific to the film’s central narrative don’t suffice.
