A group of five friends hiking in the Scottish wilderness stumbles across a young Serbian girl, kidnapped and buried alive deep in the mountains. As they try to rescue her, across some of the most difficult countryside, they are pursued by brutally efficient kidnappers, and by the girl’s father, a Serbian war criminal who’s not exactly a good guy himself.
I usually take Brit movies like A Lonely Place to Die with a Lot’s Wife of salt – they so often star Danny Dyer and are kind of crap. But this one, surprisingly, was really quite enjoyable. It does the audience the favor of taking itself seriously, its pacing is frenetic, and the characters, ably lead by Aussie actress Melissa George, act pretty much logically throughout without ever jumping the shark. Yes, there’s a couple of odd scenes towards the end, particularly concerning community policing, or lack of it – but by that time you’re hooked. Lonely shot in and around the town of Dingwall, north of Inverness, and Scotland looks really spectacular on screen.