![]() Social service accommodation is found, but Will soon flees again and Tom must follow. ![]() When suspicion lifts, Will is praised for how well he has raised Tom but they are not permitted to return to their forest home. Immediately applying labels like homeless and potential abusive relationship, the authorities subject them to the kind of interrogation that presumes the worst. That is until a walker spots them and police are brought in. They are close, sleep together for warmth, and the forest is their home. His teenage daughter, androgynously named Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie), has been raised by Will since infancy and is as adept at chess and reading literature as she is at hunting in the wild. The father, Will (Ben Foster), is a war veteran with chronic PTSD and cannot stand the confinement of conventional accommodation. Silent but for the sound of nature, they forage, taste nature's bounty, and communicate by gesture. The ruggedly beautiful opening scenes show a father and daughter appearing to be camping in the wilderness. ![]() ![]() Homelessness, poverty, single-parenting, post-traumatic stress disorder, and life off-the-grid are just some of the themes woven into this finely balanced film. It usually adopts a single perspective but Leave No Trace (2018) is as multi-layered as a Russian doll. As debut features go, I’ve seen worse, which is about as far as this review goes by way of endorsement.Framing a story through the outlier's point of view is a self-reflective device that makes us to look at ourselves through the eyes of the marginalised other. The acting isn’t bad, and the sense of primitive isolation is palpable. Something might be disappointing when we see how obvious that something is. Something is growling unearthly noises in the dark, leaving claw marks high on trees. But mainly this is a simple creature feature variation, without the frights to back that up. There are nits to pick here, about how the kid is really getting by. Something sent the father away, something Mom doesn’t talk about even as she teaches their son to celebrate Dad’s birthday with a fishing trip and birthday cake.Īnd once Mom is gone, we continue to wonder about those things even if Solomon doesn’t. The narrative of Daniel Robinette’s debut feature is seeded with clues about what’s happened, what’s happening and what’s to come. “Tethered” is about what the near-adult Solomon starts hearings in those woods, and what he and a hunter ( Kareem Ferguson) who stumbles into him try to do about it. And thirdly, “Never ever let go of the rope. “When your will is almost gone, find comfort in singing our song.” She and his father read his children’s books on cassette tape, and she sang with little Solomon as well. “Always give back to the forest when it provides for us.” That means leaving a little bit of squirrel meat or what have you out there for the critters. Mom ( Alexandra Paul) raised him to follow three rules to keep himself alive out here by himself. Solomon - played by Brody Bett as a tween, Jared Laufree as a teen - traps animals for food, plants root crops in a garden and keeps a goat. ![]() That’s about as minimal as minimalist thrillers get, which can be a virtue but in this case produces a movie sorely lacking in surprises, action or suspense. In the thriller “Tethered,” a little blind boy is raised by his parents to live self-sufficient and alone in the woods, keeping himself tied, by rope, to the home he makes his way back to each day after checking his trapline. ![]()
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