"Dartmoor Killing" (Guardian 18/09/15)

Dartmoor Killing **

Dir: Peter Nicholson. With: Gemma-Leah Devereux, Rebecca Night, Callum Blue, David Hayman. 94 mins. Cert: 15

 
Peter Nicholson’s low-budget horror-thriller starts rather better than it ends. As two young hikers (Gemma-Leah Devereux and Rebecca Night) are led off the beaten track by a hunky guide (Callum Blue), the first act’s every set-up benefits from the screen-filling backdrops of the eponymous Moors. It’s disappointing, then, that Nicholson should thereafter retreat from this most spectacular stage to a farmhouse haunted by mysterious deaths; doubly so when the relationships, dialogue and eventually action all stop ringing true. Redact the gore, and it’d make an attractive promo for Dartmoor Tourism, but 2012’s A Night in the Woods hounded its characters far more persuasively over this particular terrain. 

Dartmoor Killing opens in selected cinemas from today.