Marché du Film: Michael J. Bassett's WILDERNESS, w/ Toby Kebbell, Stephen Wight, Luke Neal, Ben McKay, Adam Deacon, Richie Campbell, Stephen Don, Sean Pertwee, Alex Reid, Lenora Crichlow, & Karly Greene

Here's a synopsis for Wilderness from the BIFFF website: "The inmates of Moorgate Young Offenders Institution are beyond the help of the system. They're too tough to handle and too far gone to be brought back. Their prison is a dumping ground for the young criminals that society cannot deal with. Nothing scares them, nothing and no one intimidates them. That is until they are sent to the wilderness. They are dropped in an alien world of dense forests, treacherous rivers and jagged coastline. For one week they have to learn to work as a team, to develop character and maybe even discover a new respect for each other. But there's someone else on the island who wants to teach them a bigger lesson: The Hunter. And they are doomed to become his prey. The only way they'll survive this bloody ordeal is to stop battling with each other and pull together. Can they unite against their deadly enemy and fight back?"

Here's a description of Wilderness from Bassett's site: "A group of young offenders are delivered to an island for a week of character building exercises after one of their fellow inmates commits suicide. It all goes horribly wrong when they realise that there's someone else on the island who has a pack of dogs and a crossbow with which to hunt them down. ¶ Basically it's a slasher movie but it's turned out to be a lot more interesting than that, largely because the performances and characters are quite unusual for this kind of movie. It has a very 'real' feel to it but is still very visceral, pretty horrifying and rather exciting. So with great performances, some terrifically gory set-peices and a nice gritty feel to it all it's turned out like a combination of 'Scum', 'Battle Royale' and, 'Deliverance' with a little 'Lord of the Flies' thrown in for good measure."

For more information on Wilderness, see Twitch's fifth, fourth, third, second, and first articles on it.

MichaelBassett.com: Wilderness trailer (downloadable 13.1 MB MOV file)
MichaelBassett.com: Dog_biting_arm video (downloadable 1.1 MB MOV file)
MichaelBassett.com: Wilderness production stills gallery (135 JPEGs)
MichaelBassett.com: Wilderness page