Movie Spotlight: Out in the Wilderness

There is a rule: stay on the trail. There is another rule: always let someone know where you are going. These rules exist because the people who broke them didn’t make it back. The four teenagers at the center of Out in the Wilderness know these rules. They ignore them anyway.

Director Sam Conrady and screenwriter Hannah Eaton built their debut feature around a simple question: what happens when inexperienced people make one too many small decisions incorrectly? The characters in the film are not survivalists or action heroes. They are ordinary people, and the forest takes them apart accordingly. “Even a seemingly small oversight like not checking the weather,” Eaton says, “can easily spiral into life-or-death consequences.”

Four people, four breaking points

Conrady and Eaton designed each character with a specific flaw the wilderness would amplify. Autumn needs to be in control; under pressure, that reads as hostile. Lucas is impulsive; when he’s overwhelmed, it costs the group. Anne lacks the physical and mental resilience to absorb sustained stress without it leaking into every interaction. Bella has severe anxiety; the pressure shuts down her ability to advocate for herself at the moments when it matters most. “Each person has different specific ways that the pressure of survival affects them,” Eaton says, “but they each end up showing their stress in ways that negatively impact the group’s functioning.”

A small forest, a big story

The film is set in northern Maine, but shot in Rhode Island. That substitution was partly practical and partly deliberate. The pine forests near Richmond gave the film its northern atmosphere, and unlike denser deciduous forest, pine trees leave a person feeling exposed. The crew also chose their specific location because of a stream. It was too small to appear on a map, but large enough for the characters to drink from. It kept them alive without pointing toward safety. “The river at the location that we chose kept the characters alive,” Conrady says, “but couldn’t lead them to safety, adding to the aspect of feeling trapped.” For crew safety, the forest itself was small enough that a 30-minute walk in any direction would reach a road. The characters had no such luck.

The writer in the ensemble

Hannah Eaton wrote the screenplay, adapted from her own book, and also plays Autumn Moore. That double role turned out to be a production asset. When questions came up on set about what a character was thinking, or why a relationship worked a certain way, the person with the answer was standing right there in costume. “She knew Autumn in-and-out,” Conrady says, “and that understanding of both her character and the relationships between her and Lucas, Anne, and Bella bled through into her performance.”

What to know before you press play

Out in the Wilderness runs over two hours and was shot on a $200 budget by a crew that was mostly high school students, using equipment ordered from Amazon a few weeks before production. The team called their skeleton crew a femur crew when it got even smaller. This was their first feature film. The production was electrifying, chaotic, and full of heat and bugs and tick checks, and the film that came out of it is genuinely full-length. “Somehow…it worked,” Conrady says. She’s right. The story asks who you really are when the comforts of ordinary life are gone, and this crew found out for themselves.

Action/Adventure

---

Streaming now on Relay.