Panic Fest 2025 Coverage
Beyond the Drumlins review
Another reason to never go into the woods. Bad things happen in the woods.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
Beyond the Drumlins
Directed by Dan Bowhers
Written by Dan Bowhers and Michael Kowalski
Starring Emma Jessop, Daniel Titmuss, Michael Kowalski, Morgan DeTogne, Michael Gilhooly, Julia Kerr and Ed Contini
Beyond the Drumlins Review
There are enough horror films telling us to stay out of the woods to make up their own prolific genre. Beyond the Drumlins adds a sci-fi bent to the unexplained horror found in forests throughout horror cinema. That’s not to say there are explanations to be found here. Still just a bunch of inexplicable things going on in the woods. There are, however, noticeable patterns in Beyond the Drumlins that help you understand the trek towards danger its characters find themselves on.
Professor Jonathan Rust (Michael Kowalski) sets out on an expedition with TA Cameron (Emma Jessop), a fellow professor and a man hired to do the digging. They meet up with Tanner (Dan Titmuss) and head into the woods to find a dig site for archeology class. When Cameron vanishes without a trace…the group finds that getting out of these woods is going to be a lot harder than getting in.
Beyond the Drumlins opens with a man trying to escape the woods we’ll be spending the bulk of the movie in. He vanishes as soon as he hits the edge of the forest. It’s an effective little opening that sets a perfect tone for what’s to come. Cameron vanishes soon after the group reaches their destination. Before that happens, she’s seen coughing and acting strangely. She hears voices that the others don’t. These seemingly odd actions become part of the way to track what’s happening in Beyond the Drumlins.
Just because Cameron has disappeared…it doesn’t mean we won’t see her again. She’s crossed into some other kind of place. She runs into a man there who says, “the veil is thin here” and that this is a “remarkable place”. His name is Steven…and he sees and hears a person of his own. That woman seems to be to Steven as Steven is to Cameron. A chain that makes things add up a bit more when characters start seeing Cameron themselves. Steven listens to the woman and kills someone. Later, Jonahtan will start listening to Cameron too.
Tanner, injured after a brief Cameron sighting, seems to be the only person willing to reason out what’s happening in these woods. He and Tom, the digger, find a freestanding stone that contains a strange hole and carvings. It activates something…letting out a loud noise and some kind of sonic wave. Tom describes the stone as having been “thinking”. We see Steven has also had an experience with the stone.
That’s about as much specific information as Beyond the Drumlins is going to provide about what’s going on. The story is more fixated on what happens when things get rolling than it is explaining how these things are possible. Whatever it is…it gets inside your head and leads you and others into danger. Tom and Jonathan are both being heavily affected in different ways. Following Tanner’s injury…Tom and the other professor head for help. Jonathan stays with Tanner. Cameron, who Tanner openly notes isn’t Cameron, grows closer to Jonathan. Tom’s distance from the entity affects him in a different, no less dark, way.
The performances here are universally strong. Each actor has to take their character on a journey from grounded normalcy through fear to whatever way in which the woods has affected and changed them. We know that the most common reason to shoot an independent horror movie in the woods is to keep costs low…but Beyond the Drumlins manages to feel bigger than the standard woods shoot. Multiple dimensions, unexplained science fiction notes, ever-changing characters…it all adds up to more than the sum of its parts.
Essentially, Beyond the Drumlins is a simple person missing in the woods set-up with a cosmic sci-fi horror concept driving it. What makes the movie a cut above standard “don’t go in the woods” fare is that the nature of where Cameron went…and the pattern of destruction that follows are fascinating concepts. Five people walked into the woods at the beginning of Beyond the Drumlins…to say they won’t all make it out is obvious. Whether some can ever leave…and those that do can ever truly escape…is what makes Beyond the Drumlins a winner.
Scare Value
Beyond the Drumlins heads into the woods and never returns. It takes you with a small group of characters as they fall one by one to a strange, mind-altering, occurrence. Explanations aren’t readily available, but patterns are easily recognizable. Whether Beyond the Drumlins gets in your head…making you a part of the pattern…is up to you.
