Mark Reviews Movies: TETHERED

Tethered, Gravitas Ventures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 17, 2022

The level of stillness in director Daniel Robinette's Tethered is admirable. This is a movie about the quiet of the forest and the loneliness of solitude, as well as loss. On the surface, the story is the mystery of how a blind young man ended up alone in the woods, of his odd routines and habits, and of the thing that lives in the forest beyond his cabin. The underlying mood here is far more engaging than the story itself, penned by screenwriter Aaron Sorgius, but eventually, the latter takes over this small, low-and-minor-key horror tale.

Solomon (Jared Laufree) is alone in that cabin, located an unknown but notable distance away from any signs of other people. A prologue follows him as a boy (played by Brody Bett), living with his mother (played by Alexandra Paul), who teaches her visually impaired son how to find and check traps for food. In a clear case of a sort of brainwashing, the mother reads him a homemade book of a goat who traveled from home, became scared, and returned to safety. Finally, she insists Solomon always wear a rope, tied to the cabin's porch, whenever he ventures into the woods, so that he doesn't lose his way home.

The mother becomes ill and, one night, wanders into the forest. Years later, Solomon keeps up the routines established by his mother, listening to her voice recite the rules for his survival every night on a tape recorder.

Inevitably, Solomon's isolation is interrupted by a hunter named Hank (Kareem Ferguson, a bit too stiff and patronizing for the mentor the character becomes), who knocks Solomon unconscious with his rifle when the young man starts swiping at him with a knife. The hunter offers Solomon a deal: He'll feed the loner from his hunt, if Solomon lets Hank stay in his cabin for the night.

The rest of the plot mostly resembles a scavenger hunt, as Hank (who oddly seems to have no other responsibilities, since he just makes residence in the cabin) finds various clues about Solomon, his mother, and the events that led to the young man's father being out of the picture. When the hunter hears and sees some strange creature in the forest, he decides to help Solomon trap the beast, so that the young man can have a bit more security in his secluded lifestyle.

There is such sadness to Solomon's solitary existence, and Robinette's slow pace and meticulous detail in showing us the extent of that lonely life certainly makes an impact. It's once Tethered begins down a familiar path, with the introduction of the hunter and the creature, that the movie sacrifices its strongest element, in favor of a routine plot in which the filmmakers struggle to find a purpose.

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