A Night in the Woods 2011

The film follows Kerry Hastings and her American boyfriend Brody Cartwright on a camping trip to Dartmoor, where Brody is determined to document every moment with his video camera. The mood turns tense when Kerry invites Leo to join them; Brody’s patience thins as he watches Leo flirt with Kerry, trying to hide his growing jealousy by pretending friendliness. The trio pulls off a stop at a local pub, where villagers recount a chilling legend about The Huntsman, a figure who carves crosses into the foreheads of sinners before striking them down.

As the days pass, Brody’s envy spikes after he witnesses Kerry and Leo sharing jokes and warmth, prompting him to question whether Leo is truly a cousin. He covertly confronts Leo over footage of Leo sneaking into their home, and in a misguided bid to catch them in the act, Brody plants a camera in their tent. The surveillance exposes a web of deception: not only are Kerry and Leo not related, but they were lovers in the past, and Kerry had lied to Brody to smooth things over. With the truth out, Leo and Kerry’s relationship rekindles, a development that bursts into a violent moment when Leo hurts Kerry. He tries to apologize, but Kerry rejects him, insinuating that Brody’s emotional distance echoes her late father’s memory. Leo disappears, leaving Kerry alone in the woods.

Alone, Kerry starts to sense something sinister in the forest: strange noises echo around the trees, and nooses appear dangling from branches. She is suddenly chased by an unseen force, knocked unconscious, and wakes to find a cross carved on her forehead. She staggers back to the campsite, furious to uncover the tent camera and the footage Brody had secretly recorded—clips of her nightmare-filled sleep and a revelation that Brody had plotted to abandon her in the woods, mirroring a solitude he once sought there ten years earlier. The anger burns hot, and she snaps at the camera, vowing to hurt Brody.

Her fury is interrupted by a brutal discovery: Leo returns, badly bruised and cut. Kerry moves to help him, but Leo erupts in a fit of rage and chases her into the trees. Moments later, she encounters a bruised and bleeding Brody, who urges her to believe that Leo is not himself and that an unknown force is hunting them. They scramble to find an exit, but trust frays as Kerry spots Leo’s bracelet on the ground and suspects Brody of foul play. In a desperate struggle, Kerry fights Brody and kills him, leaving herself battered, alone, and hunted in the forest.

In a further shock, Kerry finds Leo’s digital camera and watches a clip revealing Brody being attacked and dragged away by an unseen assailant. Panic floods her as she scouts for a way out, but a violent assault interrupts her escape, and the screen cuts to black, leaving the fate of Kerry and the mystery of the woods unresolved.