The Girl on the Mountain

Terrific scenery. It stops there. If any musicians were actually playing (daughter excluded, she couldn't even pretend convincingly), it did not match the soundtrack. So, Jack's score was jotted in a notebook and scored for piano? And he took his phone out during a performance? The first three minutes set us up for a comedy of sloppy film-making. And why did his daughter suddenly walk out into the path of the only car on the road, coming towards her with lights on? And then there was the posse of villains, who get out of the car, and walk on into the night, leaving the car with its lights on. Dumb is as dumb gets.

Really, the lack of research, attention to detail and common sense destroyed what credibility the movie may have had. Shame, because the basic premise was sound, despite the execution.

Execution was awful. Just no common sense to a few details.

The girls acting was superb. Jack's character was trying to be a hard mountain man but yet a sensitive artist. It just didn't work.

Worst acting. Only good thing about this story was scenery. This isn't a Disney nor Christian movie and you're telling me red necks who look like heavy metal rockers don't say one curse word the whole movie? Not even a damn. Lmao. At least with Disney and Christian movies you know what you get. Why would director make it so unrealistic? "You better stop right now mister or I will hurt you" Lol. So cheesy. Dude gets spear stuck in leg and no cursing out of anger? I mean it doesn't have to be like CASINO with too much swearing but that was ridiculous and the acting just horrific. You got the blood and violence but not a sh#t? Very cheesy. Pass up unless you want to see God's beautiful nature.

Greetings again from the darkness. Jack Ward first appears as the conductor of an orchestra during a live performance. It seems to be going well until he declines a call from his teenage daughter, Melody. See, it's his day to pick her up from school. When he doesn't show up, she walks home. After receiving congratulations for the musical performance, tragedy and guilt strike Jack on the same day. And then tragedy strikes again. It's more than one man can take, and the next time we see Jack, he's on a mountaintop contemplating suicide.

Writer-director Matt Sconce delivers a story from Christopher Mejia, and much of it takes place in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Actually, the mountains and the shots of nature (filmed by director Sconce) are the standouts here, as it's terrain that we haven't seen too often on screen. As a conductor, Jack (Daniel O'Reilly) was the ultimate clean-cut professional. After time on the mountain, he a haggard, worn-down man with little reason to live. He carries a bullet in his boot for the day when he's strong enough to end things. One day, a mute girl steals food from his backpack. He tracks her down and since he (conveniently) knows sign-language, he learns the mute girl is running from a dangerous family situation. He calls her Aria (Makenzie Sconce, assuming her to be the director's daughter), and the two bond over skimming stones, fishing, and paper airplanes.

The tension in the story is twofold: flashbacks and the pursuit. Jack and Aria both have their flashbacks to bad times. Jack recalls his mistakes with daughter Melody (Sarah Dorothy Little), while Aria's dreams remind of her an unbearable life with her dad, Big Al. It's Big Al's pursuit of Aria that keeps her and Jack on the lookout. He's hunting her down since she was witness to his horrible action. There are two distractions here that deserve mention. The eye makeup on Mr. O'Reilly is downright creepy at times, while the orthodontic braces on Aria's teeth simply don't belong, given the deep poverty of her home life.

Mr. O'Reilly, young Ms. Sconce, and Ms. Little are fine in their roles, but the other supporting characters, though not on screen for long, are detrimental to flow. The story of redemption and awakening is really nothing new, but the mountainous setting adds a level of differentiation that keeps us interested. A strange ending leaves us wondering, what now?

Available On Demand beginning March 8, 2022.

This movie is like a suit with bad stitching. The most disappointing of it is the screenplay. So, given the screenplay, I would say that acting is OK most of the time, even though characters are barely sketched. I have to imagine the guilt and suffering of the man for loosing his daughter and to guess the emotion and the development of the bond and trust between the girl and the man, Big Al not really convincing, nor the fighting scenes, in the woods I would bet on the redneck, not on the orchestra conductor playing Rambo. Also the waitress at the end is quite hilarious getting scared by the knife.