Gone To Ground

NOW ON TUBI AND FAWESOME! To understand why filmmaker Phil Peel’s charming thriller Gone To Ground is so damn tasty, just substitute chocolate for drama and then peanut butter with exploitation.

Magda (Melissa De Mol) comes in a wrecked car after an accident, all banged up. She can’t remember what happened, and it is dark in the forest where she is trapped. The window fills up with the inquisitive face of Englishman Guy (Alan Breck), a little old man who is asking if he can help. He toddles off and comes back much later with some chocolate for Magda. He manages to drag her back to his house in the forest, where he cleans her up and puts her to bed. When Magda wakes up, she calls Guy a dirty old pervert in a foreign accent. Guy finds out she is Polish and informs her that he used to fly in the RAF during WWII.

“Magda comes in a wrecked car after an accident, all banged up.”

Magda accuses Guy of trying to f**k her. Guy informs Magda that he isn’t, and also doesn’t like that word. He would prefer she use the term intercourse in place of the more common word, which perplexes Magda endlessly. Guy states he is going to look after her while she is recovering from the accident, which she begrudgingly goes along with. They both frustrate each other in Guy’s house in the countryside, being worlds apart in age and background. Sometimes Magda has a panic attack and reacts violently to the air.

Meanwhile, in the city, Justin (Alastair Thomson Mills), an associate in Magna’s sex work business, is getting angry calls from the shadowy powers that be in the flesh trade about the disappearance of a fellow named Adrian (Alex Reece). Adrian is notoriously cruel with sex workers but has connections on the sleaze circuit, so Justin needs to find where Magda went to ask her a few questions…

Gone To Ground is just being released this year, but has all the earmarks of an unearthed cinematic treasure. This is a great movie that is finally seeing the light of day after being on a shelf for too long. What gives the age of the project away is the telltale technology used: tiny handheld flip phones, paired with laptops being used inside of cars.