I've watched this short film on IFC several times, and it's quickly become one of my all time favorite short films.
The short starts with a well dressed city couple dragging a sleeping bag through the woods, and even though it quickly becomes obvious that the bag contains a dead body, they are discussing the husband's upcoming business trip. However, once the conversation turns back to their little problem, the mean-spirited bickering reveals an obviously neurotic couple with serious pre-existing issues. In stark contrast, there's two other people in the woods, a kind and wise middle-aged man and his inept teenage son, who's struggling with his gun safety and marksmanship during their turkey hunting trip. There's a flashback to reveal how the city couple got into their unusual predicament, and there's some long transition shots of the beautiful woods accompanied by eerie music which leads us to believe that these two pairs may be on an unfortunate collision course.
I find the scenes between the bickering city couple absolutely hilarious. The well written barbs are very mean-spirited, but very easy to laugh at because both of them are so darn unlikeable. Classic case of a couple who are their own living hell, even before the highly unusual problem they now face.
The filmmakers made a very wise decision to shoot this short film while the leaves were in full autumn color. It makes the photography of this short film amazingly colorful and gorgeous. And they took the effort to add some aerial and time elapse photography as well. None of these beautiful shots would have looked anywhere nearly as good if all the leaves had been green.
The darkly comic ending is genius... perfectly fitting the short film's theme.
Go out of your way to see this one.
