Video Player All Time Top Ten! No. 6: THE CANYON

[Twitch is undergoing some behind the scenes tire kicking and bolt-tightening over the next few days, work that may slow down the regular flow of new information a little bit. So, while that's going on we'll be presenting a series of retro-reposts, pulling forward the all time top ten videos since we moved to our current video system. This post originally appeared June 10.]

Nature may be beautiful but it can also be very very harsh and once you take us humans out of our carefully controlled environments we're awfully fragile things. This is the potent ground explored in Richard Harrah's The Canyon, soon to have it's world premiere at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal. I normally hold on to my program guide notes a little longer than this but, hey ... there's no time like the present. Here's what I wrote about the film for the Fantasia program guide:

Young and in love, Nick and Lori have taken the plunge, eloped to Las Vegas and gotten themselves hitched. Lori's parents will probably be furious when they return but that's a week away yet and there's still a honeymoon to be had, a week spent surrounded by the natural beauty of the Grand Canyon. Nick's had a long standing fixation with the history of the region, you see, and Lori is more than willing to indulge her new husband with a guided mule tour down into the Canyon floor. Of course, the problem is that there are very limited numbers of passes granted for these sorts of tours, passes that require months of advance planning and their marriage was not exactly a long-planned event.

Enter Will Patton as Henry, the drunken old coot who seems to be as much a part of the land as a resident on it, a local character filled with fascinating stories and a disregard for the way things are meant to be done who swears that he can guide them into the Canyon if they want. He's even got all of the gear required. The pair agree and life is good until - well off of the approved trail through the Canyon - Henry is bitten by a poisonous snake, the pack animals panic and scatter and Nick and Lori are stranded - completely without resources to help the dying Henry and completely helpless to find their way out of the Canyon without his guidance. All there is in their future is hunger, thirst and wolves.

An intimate survival thriller from director Richard Harrah, The Canyon takes great advantage of both the stunning natural settings and the skills of lead actors Yvonne Strahovski and Eion Bailey as Lori and Nick. The newlyweds feature in every scene of the picture, the success of the film lying in their slow fade into panic and despair as plans fail and supplies dwindle, pushing the pair to ever more desperate plans. As their technology fails, meager supplies dwindle and it becomes increasingly evident that they are hopelessly lost with no help coming, Lori and Nick slip into a world of increasingly murky moral decisions. Even worse than the prospect of neither of them surviving is the very real possibility that only one of them can and that they will have to make the decision as to who it will be.

We've just gotten an exclusive first look at the film's trailer and it's a good one! You'll find it below the break!