Foothills - Review

I’m no stranger to weird little films about weird little feelings, so it was nice to feel a bit at home in Foothills. This short film captures an uncanny feeling of time, familiarity and discomfort in just a couple of minutes. I don’t know if I fully grasped all it’s trying to do but that doesn’t mean there’s not something more to explore. I am a fan of films that tell stories through odd dialogue and mess with your perception of the world, only when it’s justified though. With Foothills, I think I need to maybe delve into the story a little more to fully conclude if the weirdness is justified. Either way, the film is presented very well, with a nice, warm yet unsettling look to it, and performances that capture what the script is trying to convey.

Clara (Haley Schwartz) wakes up in a field, phone smashed, lost. She looks around for familiar sights when Greg (Johnny Zito) enters her view. He promises a solution to her technical problem if she would just follow him up the hill. The pair see a distressed Alex (Cole Taylor). He seems to have lost all his emails and is just as lost as Clara. When Clara and Greg arrive at the house, Clara feels like she may have been there before, taking in her surroundings with some scepticism of Greg’s intentions. He convinces Clara to sit, enjoy some TV and relax while he gets to work on her phone. Time skips by while Clara watches the TV, and she becomes concerned that Greg may not be telling her everything.

There are small details in the film that I struggle to connect in helping me understand exactly what writer-director Noah Chamberlain is trying to say with Foothills, but from what I can grasp, I liked it. It certainly doesn’t spoonfeed the story to the audience, but has enough intrigue to make you want to investigate the meaning. This comes from both writing and acting, which I found a little inconsistent. Greg has some intense lines of dialogue in the film, where they are delivered with a lot of gusto. While I’m sure that is an intentional choice, I didn’t really see the need for the ramp in tension when the unsettling nature of the environment is effective enough.

The film looks great. This is majorly helped by the location. The house that Greg brings Clara to has a homely feel to it, but is set dressed in a way that makes it feel just that little bit off. The views from the cabin are endless nature, setting it in a suspended world where we know technology exists but it feels removed from modernity. The weather changes in the middle of the film, raining outside, changing the tone completely. Suddenly the outside is uninviting, and the atmosphere of the house feels a lot more oppressive. This change is an impressive shift, which I think comes down to the setting and camera work in showcasing the scene.

Foothills won’t be for everyone. The experimental nature of the story will be rejected by some, and dismissed by others. However, the audience for this film will hopefully find it and appreciate it for what it is. I am intrigued by Noah Chamberlain’s approach to filmmaking and hope they continue to explore ideas in this way, progressing to bigger and bolder concepts, with more access to what they need to express those ideas.