Director blends trauma, horror in first feature
Dark Nature centres on women using retreat as therapy to confront their pasts
It may be tempting to find symbolism in the uninvited guest that would often show up on the set of Dark Nature in the wilds of Alberta.
The horror film focuses on a group of women who go on a wilderness retreat with a therapist, only to discover they are being stalked by something. In real life, the set of the indie film would occasionally be visited by a persistent grizzly bear when the production was filming near the Canyon Creek Ice Caves in Kananaskis in the fall of 2021. The crew attempted to ward it off by honking air and car horns to no avail.
The bear didn't seem remotely fazed by the actors and crew who were on hand, but writer-director Berkley Brady said it didn't seem particularly threatening, either.
Nevertheless, having it appear near the set was thought-provoking.
“It was that time when he was getting ready to hibernate,” says Brady. “The grizzly bear came and wouldn't really go away. He — he or she, I don't know — wasn't aggressive or menacing. Their sense of smell is so strong, he could smell all our food. We were definitely in his zone. With the grizzly bear coming and haunting us and looking hungry, I was like, `What could this grizzly bear mean for us and me as an artist?' Working hard and starving.”
Still, there is a certain irony to it. Brady and her cinematographer, Jaryl Lim, have a knack for making the natural splendour of Kananaskis look beautiful and somewhat menacing, hence the title of the film.
Dark Nature centres on a group of women who are all suffering from some form of trauma and hope the retreat acts as therapy to help them confront their pasts.
That includes Joy (played by Hannah Emily Anderson), who is convinced by her best friend Carmen (Madison Walsh) to accompany her on the retreat after escaping an abusive relationship. Also on the journey is Tara (Helen Belay), who is a self-harmer; Shaina (Roseanne Supernault), a no-nonsense soldier who is nevertheless suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and the group's eccentric therapist, Dr. Dunley (Kyra Harper). Joy begins to suspect something or someone, perhaps her abusive ex, is stalking the group, but has a hard time convincing the others.
Is she imagining it? Have the women's fears manifested into something real and terrifying? Dark Nature, which will screen on Sept. 30 and Oct. 2 as part of the Calgary International Film Festival, does eventually become what Brady calls a “creature feature,” albeit one with some serious undertones.
“I started thinking, `How could I make this story with this character horrific from the beginning?'” Brady says. “So I started thinking about domestic abuse being a sort of horror. That's why I started the movie with the scene that starts it. OK, that's the horror. I'm not going to tease out her abuse or what happened, let's just get right into what happened and the fallout.
“To me, it's not about what happened, it's more about the aftermath. There are a lot of horror movies about trauma. Trauma is such a zeitgeisty topic the last couple of years. I wanted to avoid that and say, `This is not about trauma so much as living with trauma and the effect that has on friendships and just day-to-day life.'”
The Metis filmmaker spent her early childhood near Edmonton before moving to Calgary at the age of six. She studied creative writing at the University of Victoria before receiving her Masters of Fine Arts at Columbia's film program in New York City. Dark Nature is her first feature film, though she was involved in several short films and directed episodes of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network's Secret History of the Wild West upon returning to Calgary.
While she initially had plans to only stay in the city temporarily, she said she eventually realized this is where she wants to make films. She lives with her husband, Calgary cinematographer Ian Lister, and their six-month-old son Cullen. Dark Nature screened as part of Montreal's Fantasia International Film Festival and appeared at the Cannes Marché du Film, which is the industry arm of the renowned film festival.
Brady names The Exorcist as one of her favourite films and has always been a fan of the horror genre. But she also wants to explore other stories.
“I'm not a snob in my tastes, I think if you like something you should celebrate it and just enjoy it,” she says. “At Columbia, I had some teachers who were all about popular movies and celebrated that. But I told one professor that I wanted to make a movie like Beaches meets Blue Crush in the snowboarding world and it's still a movie I want to make. She was like, `You don't want to do that. You want to make a good movie, not a movie like that.' No, I want to make a melodrama. I love to cry. I want to care about these characters and cry in the theatre.'”