FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE

You know, being born in a rural area as I was, “Far As the Eye Can See” sort of struck a chord with me. Especially when I fill you in on the plot.

A recently bereaved young woman is required to take her horse off for slaughtering due to his advanced age. On a short stop, a series of calamities overtakes her that leaves her stranded in the middle of quite literally nowhere, and now she has to figure out a way to survive until help can find her… if it finds her at all.

Now, like I said, this struck a chord with me. I wish they would have credited the writer so I could congratulate him or her by name, because they called it–one of the things you notice real early on living in the country is the extreme isolation. You can be living on a hundred-acre spread of ground and your nearest neighbor is two miles down the road. I routinely make a trip ten miles one way just to watch a movie in a theatre. A thirty-mile (also one way) commute is not out of line. So when you’re alone in the desert with your horse trailer backed up against a water tower and your truck breaks down, you’ve got some serious problems. Country folk depend on their cars because the alternative is outrageous. Walk or bike ten, twenty, thirty miles? One way?? That’s insane!

There is a fair chance you don’t have cell phone service. If you don’t tell anyone where you’re going it’s possible no one even knows where you are. This is not the place for agoraphobics but if you’re a claustrophobe I guarantee long, restful sleep out here.

And so, watching our heroine try to survive out in the desert becomes a harrowing, eye-opening experience in inventiveness and sheer common sense. Not to mention a pretty decent short film about something all too likely to happen, and those are the scariest stories.