Dating is hard. So when Annie suggests a unique first date — meet me at Idyllwild campsite, and bring your tent — Berit decides to go for it. Is this how it all starts? Or how it ends?
Director’s Vision for ‘Idle/Wild’
IDLE/WILD is a mystery/horror/thriller in the vein of Under the Skin, with elements of Barbarian and Resurrection. It uses the accumulation of detail and dread — through Annie’s anxiety and Berit’s growing sense of dislocation — to tell an allegorical story of queer fear and the ways in which safety is perceived, understood, and abused in queer life.
I looked at myths and stories of wood nymphs and dryads as the foundation for a (spoiler) skin-stealing creature that uses queer attraction and intimacy to move from body to body. Like sea sirens, wood nymphs emerged in folk tales to explain the fates of people who went missing, were injured, or were murdered in the woods. The legend goes that nymphs use music and the allure of the female form to lure unsuspecting travelers to their deaths, and consume their bodies and souls for their own nourishment. The tale varies slightly from culture to culture, but anywhere there are woods, there are wood nymph stories.
I used practical FX to demonstrate Annie’s “monstrosity” as it emerges, along with the good old fashioned tools of story and editing to create the sense of horror, dread, and dislocation we feel as Berit’s fate grows more and more inevitable.
The LA-based grunge band SLUGS has agreed to lend their music to the production, including letting us rework “Cool World” in one of our scenes.
