The Canyon is a new version of a very familiar story. It does a relatively effective job of telling that story, but does nothing with it that hasn't been done before. The result is a legitimately entertaining but ultimately forgettable movie.
Nick and Lori (Eion Bailey and Yvonne Strahovski) are a young couple that have just eloped and are running away to the Grand Canyon for their honeymoon. Nick wants to take a mule trip into the Canyon while Lori's not that excited about the idea. However, the spur of the moment nature of their marriage means they never had time to get the proper permits and it seems like Nick and Lori will just have to spend the weekend having sex in their motel room (which will probably end up being the porn version of this film). That's when Henry (Will Patton), an old guide who puts the "grizz" in grizzled, offers to help them out. He claims he can get a permit and will lead them into the Canyon himself. Lori is again leery but gives in to Nick's enthusiasm for the whole thing.
Though Henry seems a bit sketchy, everything starts out fine when they meet Saturday morning to head into the Canyon. Henry has all the pack mules and supplies and appears to actually know what he's doing. The trip into the Canyon is the wonderful experience Nick thought it would be and Lori even lets herself enjoy it all. In the interest of spoiling as little as possible, particularly since this film doesn't have a lot of original twists and turns, I'll just say that things go very wrong for Lori, Nick and Henry. They wind up lost, isolated, bereft and at the mercy of a Mother Nature who's in a sadistic mood. The Canyon is the old story of Man (and Woman) vs. Nature and that tale usually doesn't end well for Man.
Outside of one complaint, this is a pretty good production. The plot is logically and frighteningly plausible. The scenery is beautiful, though it's Utah and not the real Grand Canyon. The three main characters are all interesting people and the actors in those roles give fine performances. There's a real sense of tension and dread which is broken every so often by flashes of humor and defiance. This movie has all the right pieces and it assembles them in the proper fashion with enough talent and effort to make The Canyon a gripping little tragedy.
I do have one complaint and it's a not a tiny one. The tale of Man vs. Nature has been around forever. This variant of people stranded in a hostile wilderness and having to survive has been done in books and movies and television countless times to varying degrees of success. The Canyon is rated R and anyone old enough to be watching it has almost certainly read and seen and heard this story many times before. When a narrative is built on that sort of familiarity, it becomes very important to either add a twist to the proceedings or add a second level of meaning to what's going on. These filmmakers did neither.
There is no twist to The Canyon and the story only functions on the surface level of people in peril. I'm sure you know what I mean by twist, but let me give to an example of a story having more than one level. Nick and Lori are facing a conflict, them vs. Nature. That's the first level. A second level would be to establish some sort of conflict between Nick and Lori, a problem that is independent of their hazardous surroundings. As the story goes along, those two separate conflicts would both mirror and diverge from each other. The standard cliché is to have the external conflict exaggerate the internal conflict, such as being stranded in the Grand Canyon making the personal difficulty between Nick and Lori more bitter and divisive at first, with the need to cooperate to survive eventually leading Nick and Lori to resolve the conflict between them.
But outside of a single moment of recrimination, there's no conflict between Nick and Lori in this film. It's just Man vs. Nature with nothing else going on. Watching The Canyon is like hearing a funny joke for the third time. It's still amusing but something has definitely been lost in the repetition. I'd still rather hear a funny joke for a third time than a bad joke for the first time, so I'd still recommend this movie as worth watching. Just don't expect much more than a momentary diversion.
Nick and Lori (Eion Bailey and Yvonne Strahovski) are a young couple that have just eloped and are running away to the Grand Canyon for their honeymoon. Nick wants to take a mule trip into the Canyon while Lori's not that excited about the idea. However, the spur of the moment nature of their marriage means they never had time to get the proper permits and it seems like Nick and Lori will just have to spend the weekend having sex in their motel room (which will probably end up being the porn version of this film). That's when Henry (Will Patton), an old guide who puts the "grizz" in grizzled, offers to help them out. He claims he can get a permit and will lead them into the Canyon himself. Lori is again leery but gives in to Nick's enthusiasm for the whole thing.
Though Henry seems a bit sketchy, everything starts out fine when they meet Saturday morning to head into the Canyon. Henry has all the pack mules and supplies and appears to actually know what he's doing. The trip into the Canyon is the wonderful experience Nick thought it would be and Lori even lets herself enjoy it all. In the interest of spoiling as little as possible, particularly since this film doesn't have a lot of original twists and turns, I'll just say that things go very wrong for Lori, Nick and Henry. They wind up lost, isolated, bereft and at the mercy of a Mother Nature who's in a sadistic mood. The Canyon is the old story of Man (and Woman) vs. Nature and that tale usually doesn't end well for Man.
Outside of one complaint, this is a pretty good production. The plot is logically and frighteningly plausible. The scenery is beautiful, though it's Utah and not the real Grand Canyon. The three main characters are all interesting people and the actors in those roles give fine performances. There's a real sense of tension and dread which is broken every so often by flashes of humor and defiance. This movie has all the right pieces and it assembles them in the proper fashion with enough talent and effort to make The Canyon a gripping little tragedy.
I do have one complaint and it's a not a tiny one. The tale of Man vs. Nature has been around forever. This variant of people stranded in a hostile wilderness and having to survive has been done in books and movies and television countless times to varying degrees of success. The Canyon is rated R and anyone old enough to be watching it has almost certainly read and seen and heard this story many times before. When a narrative is built on that sort of familiarity, it becomes very important to either add a twist to the proceedings or add a second level of meaning to what's going on. These filmmakers did neither.
There is no twist to The Canyon and the story only functions on the surface level of people in peril. I'm sure you know what I mean by twist, but let me give to an example of a story having more than one level. Nick and Lori are facing a conflict, them vs. Nature. That's the first level. A second level would be to establish some sort of conflict between Nick and Lori, a problem that is independent of their hazardous surroundings. As the story goes along, those two separate conflicts would both mirror and diverge from each other. The standard cliché is to have the external conflict exaggerate the internal conflict, such as being stranded in the Grand Canyon making the personal difficulty between Nick and Lori more bitter and divisive at first, with the need to cooperate to survive eventually leading Nick and Lori to resolve the conflict between them.
But outside of a single moment of recrimination, there's no conflict between Nick and Lori in this film. It's just Man vs. Nature with nothing else going on. Watching The Canyon is like hearing a funny joke for the third time. It's still amusing but something has definitely been lost in the repetition. I'd still rather hear a funny joke for a third time than a bad joke for the first time, so I'd still recommend this movie as worth watching. Just don't expect much more than a momentary diversion.