Pitfall (Panic Fest 2026)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: James Kondelik’s Pitfall is a slasher set in the woods – which maybe needs a little more context because “slasher‑in‑the‑woods” is one of the alpha tropes of horror. It’s a stereotype that’s so baked‑in it reads like a joke, but the spoiler here is that Pitfall far exceeds the dumb, dime‑a‑dozen woodland slashers that clog the indie horror sphere and the festival circuit – there’s just a little groundwork to lay before we get there. Another potential red flag is that Pitfall, which is playing at Panic Fest 2026, is also a film about grief – which is the kind of emotional palette that can get a movie labelled as “elevated horror”. To give credit where it’s due, Kondelik’s new feature is far more than the sum of its reductive, worn‑out parts, and if anything, Pitfall can be positioned next to David Bruckner’s The Ritual as an emotionally inflected indie horror title where things just keep getting worse and worse for all involved.

The cold open sees a woman and her child desperately trying to escape her captor, but neither survives his brutality. The movie then jumps forward an undefined period of time to Scott (Marshall Williams), and Ashley (Alex Essoe), sharing a final road trip with their parents (Grant Vlahovic and Teresa Laverty), in a sequence that appears in fragments throughout the movie because of its dramatic importance. Then comes the meat of the film as Charlie, Ashley and their friends Charlie (Matt Hamilton), Gwen (Jordan Claire Robbins), and Lars (Richard Harmon), head into the woods for a camping trip. Things almost immediately go wrong when Lars nearly falls into a hunting pit (a hidden, spike‑lined hole designed to trap and kill larger predators) – something that shouldn’t exist in this forest. The group manages to pull him out before he falls all the way in, and the next day they split up for some impromptu fishing, but something happens that forces them to regroup and get out of town fast. Scott goes missing during the chaos as he’s tumbled into the titular pit and is separated from the others for the rest of the movie, but it’s no accident. It’s the work of an unnamed, vicious hunter (Randy Couture), who’s taken to stalking people in the woods, killing anyone who crosses his path with bows, axes, and an array of brutally efficient traps.

From this juncture Pitfall splits in half, the main thrust of the movie following everyone other than Scott as they struggle to find their missing friend, sibling and lover while trying to shake the feeling that someone is watching them. This feeling comes home to roost in a sequence that starts with someone opening the two women’s tents in the middle of the night and phones being stolen, and climaxes with a character being burned alive. It’s the sort of existential terror that peaked Johannes Nyholm’s surrealist Swedish camping horror Koko‑di Koko‑da (2019), but here it’s mere foreplay as the back half gets more violent and intense. While there is a kill count (low as it may be for a so‑called slasher), it’s the tension that makes this film genuinely terrifying, Kondelik instilling the back half with an oppressive level of tension that’s genuinely impressive to behold.

The other half of the film periodically returns to Scott, who’s in the process of slowly bleeding out because of massive spike through his leg. There’s also a shot where a centipede climbs into his wound, which made me wince more than any traditional horror scene could ever hope to achieve, so a little content warning there for the curious. Otherwise, his share of the movie is more psychological as his mind fractures from the guilt of what happened on that drive with his parents, combined with a healthy dose of dehydration and paranoia, and the way these two arcs collide displays a real cruel streak.

So we have a slasher in the woods where the killer isn’t some near‑mythical thing in a mask but a hunter with a bloodlust, and while it does explain his modus operandi, I feel it does this a little too late in the day. That’s my only real negative note aside from the final shot, which is both a cheap jump scare in a movie with next to no jump scares, and an attempt to shoehorn in an utterly unnecessary bit of sequel bait that just dulls an otherwise excellent and mean slice of horror.

Returning to my opening comment about this film being several ideas that modern horror fans view negatively, I feel like we’ve addressed how Pitfall deviates from the typical concept of a slasher in the woods. The words grief and trauma may send shivers up the spine of any self‑respecting horror fan, but this other aspect isn’t so much subverted as done with a little more nuance than other examples found in the genre. Whilst there is a horrific tragedy at the core of Pitfall, (one that got me tearing up), it also isn’t hamstrung by emotions so it doesn’t feel overwrought and maudlin, and instead addresses the source of the trauma in an emotionally mature way whilst (and this is key to why I’m so won over by Pitfall), being both vicious and incredibly fun – unlike the many “elevated horror” movies that forget that horror can be things beyond emotionally punishing.

The cinematography by Robert Zawistowski makes the woods feel isolated and dangerous, and he isn’t afraid to make things difficult to see – something that the Netflixisation of modern cinematography seemed to have outlawed. The cast are all excellent, MMA legend Randy Couture (who also produces), cutting an oppressive figure while brother and sister duo Marshall Williams and Alex Essoe give the project a whole load of heart, and Richard Harmon becomes the sardonic and sarcastic friend who quips without being the most hideously hateable character on two legs. Now, there’s a novelty that I could get used to.

ROB’S ARCHIVE – PITFALL (PANIC FEST 2026)