DEATH AMONG THE PINES (2025)

4 stars

Digital. Out Now

The film opens with a sweaty guy running through a forest – makes a change from the usual female victim – he falls near some crosses and comes face to face with the face of a buried body! This will make sense later…

Angela (Nicolette McKeown) arrives at her remote home (aren’t they always in the middle of nowhere) and sets about tasks around the house. She lives alone it seems. It’s a rainy night and she ends up sleeping on the sofa.

There is a knock at the door. A stranger outside – his car has broken down and he asks if he can come in to shelter as it’s cold and dark. She is understandably initially resistant, but ultimately lets him. His name is Kevin (Director Nathan Shepka – once again casting himself in a lead role, but hey you have to save money where you can).

Having let him in to warm up she gets him a change of clothes. Plus disinfectant for his scraped knuckles (how did he get those?) and, of course, a cuppa. Everything is better with a brew.

As they get to know each other it is clear she is not used to visitors. Oddly she has no television and no telephone. Only a radio to listen to. She talks of her husband Eddie, who is away for work. But is this just a way of warning Kevin to not get out of line? More chatting then oddly she calls her husband Charlie not Eddie. On the radio a news report of a manhunt for a murder suspect. Is this stranger really there because of car trouble… or is something else going on?

I have been following Shepka’s directorial and acting career for some time now, having covered his previous films WHEN DARKNESS FALLS (2022), DEAD BEFORE THEY WAKE and BABY IN THE BASKET (both 2025) and he continues to impress, whilst working within the restraints of low budget filmmaking. This is a tightly directed and tense thriller with two strong performances (especially McKeown), as the psychological games play out. Small scale but efficiently made from a script by Shepka and Tom Joliffe – they previously wrote BABY IN A BASKET together – and with atmospheric cinematography by Andy Crane and Barry Gunning.

Steve Kirkham