Backcountry thrives in the close-quarter details: the verbal knife-pricks of a dying relationship, the jangling impact of the smallest sounds breaking silence, that dread certainty that you're completely lost and it's getting dark.

MacDonald does quite well in his dramatic feature debut with solid performances from the cast. Backcountry is satisfyingly intense, although quite gory in patches.

"Backcountry" inevitably brings on the bloody, but it finds atmospheric ways to depict how the bucolic hush of a nature getaway can morph into a survival nightmare for the unprepared.

Backcountry is a one-trick pony that relies on a surprisingly well-grounded theme – The woods are scary, and so are wild animals.