Into the Forest review: Survivalist sisters in the woods

Based on a novel by Jean Hegland and set approximately two weeks after President Trump’s energy reforms kick in, this feminist science fiction pivots around Nell (Ellen Page) and Eva (Evan Rachel Wood), two squabbling sisters living in a sleek futuristic house, situated deep in ancient woodlands.

They complain to their recently widowed father (Callum Keith Rennie) when a power blackout prevents Nell from talking to her boyfriend online; aspiring dancer Eva is equally put out when she has to practise to a metronome instead of music.

But then the blackout continues on. And on. When they journey toward the nearest town, the petrol pumps and supermarket shelves are empty. Soon enough, the sisters are living not unlike the hermit siblings of We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Provisions run low. And everything and everyone is dangerous.

In the movieverse, low-key, character-driven, post-apocalypses – see Testament (1983), How I Live Now (2013), and The Survivalist (2016) – are generally superior to the $100million Emmerich variety. So it proves with Patricia Rozema's new film. The veteran director, who first came to prominence with such feminist allegories as I've Heard the Mermaids Singing and The White Room, utilises a ruthlessly pared down film grammar and clever sequences of close-ups.

Echoing the survivalist trials of her two heroines, Rozema succinctly conveys a life left behind – see the unmolested book shelf – and a new life embraced. In their deprivation and misfortune, there are moments of joy as the women render fat, pick berries and chop wood.

Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood are as impressively understated as the direction. The relationship between Nell and Eva forms a recognisably sisterly pattern of closeness, annoyance, fury and tenderness. Daniel Grant’s cinematography frequently reminds us that the forest is primordial and, that finally, it will engulf the women’s increasingly dilapidated home. They might just be ready.