Review: ‘Bright Hill Road’ captures tragedy of alcoholism

Alcohol withdrawal is terrifying. I witnessed my mother hallucinate a man wielding a knife was breaking into our house. It was the dead of night, and her blood-curdling screams chilled me to the bone. And no matter how much as I tried to console her, she was fully convinced that what she was seeing was real. Director Robert Cuffley’s Bright Hill Road, written by Susie Moloney, plants itself within such a delirious state, examining alcoholism with the upmost care and dexterity. While some of its spooky ghouls and goblins don’t quite land, the real terror comes from its dissection of addiction.

The film follows Marcy (Siobhan Williams, Motive, Black Box), a young woman working in human resources, and her eventual descent into madness. From the jump, it’s made quite clear her alcoholism has gripped every facet of her life: relationships have worn thin, and her job performance leaves much to be desired. Bright Hill Road opens on what should have been another ho-hum day in the office, but a scorned former employee shows up with a gun and murders six people. Still reeling from a hangover, Marcy rushes to a colleague’s side who has just been shot, the blood gushing from her fatal wounds. That’s enough to deeply scar anyone, but that’s only the beginning.

Marcy is abruptly put on leave, and so she high-tails it out of town to go visit her sister Mia in California. Her cross-country roadtrip soon spirals out of control, of course, as Marcy continues downing tiny liquor bottles, succumbing both to recent and past traumas at a lightning speed. She awakens the next morning on the side of the road in front of a secluded boarding house, nestled on Bright Hill Road. Its proprietor, Mrs. Inman, (Agam Darshi, Sanctuary) is a homey kind of person, a little odd yet giving off a warm, inviting quality. Marcy settles in for the night, partaking in a welcome basket complete with a bottle of wine.

One sip is enough to toss Marcy back down a dark, dangerous, and volatile path. She spends the evening dancing to her favorite music, cutting up photographs for an artsy collage, and drunk dialing her sister, lamenting their father’s death in a fire the year previously. The next morning, she feels nothing but suffocating regret but manages to regain her footing. Another tortured visitor soon arrives at the boarding house, a scruffy man named Owen (Michael Eklund, Wynonna Earp), who harbors his own demons that may be even more threatening than hers. He’s a bit charming, and a bit aloof, and you never really can get a proper read on his intentions. Owen and Marcy naturally connect over wretched pasts, although Owen’s remains largely shrouded in mystery until the finale.

Bright Hill Road runs the risk of being too much of a slow burn (think Relic), yet a lead performance from Williams and its clear influence from Carnival of Souls keeps you enthralled. Thematic layers gradually peel away, and clues about what is actually occurring appear in plain sight, with the creative team honing in on the grueling nature of recovery, relapse, and eventually accountability. “It’s like there’s a different person inside me. She’s relentless. She just wants to drink. I can’t shut her up,” Marcy confides to Owen. Such a confession imparts the film’s entire thesis: addiction never dissipates; it’s always just hibernating until it pounces again.

Bright Hill Road spills over with some of humanity’s darkest miseries and captures every buzzing high and terrible low of one damaged woman’s fight for survival. Its low budget gives it a proper rough-cut edge, allowing for the filmmakers to get a little dirty with their material. Ultimately, the film begs the question: is someone so far gone worthy of forgiveness?

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