An unnecessary establishing voiceover in its opening moments undermines what otherwise would’ve been the few surprises offered by minimalist horror film Tethered. That bit of narration is played from a cassette tape, a media format that will become incredibly important as a surrogate for actual human interaction for blind boy Solomon. On the tape, Solomon’s father (Chris Demm, who never appears on screen) explains why we find young Solomon (Brody Bett) and his mother, Nidia (Alexandra Paul), living in a secluded house deep in the woods. The father is long gone by the time we see Nidia teaching Solomon survivalist methods like checking his own small animal traps and fishing at the creek, all while the blind child is secured by a rope around his waist that will lead him back to the house. Soon, Nidia, after tucking Solomon in one night, walks out into the darkness and never returns, leaving behind a tape for Solomon with three rules for survival, the most important of which is to never lose the rope.
Jumping forward to a now-teenage Solomon (Jared Laufree) still living alone in the woods requires more than a little suspension of disbelief. Believing that a rope long enough to allow him to venture through the woods does not get hopelessly tangled, disconnected or even snagged by a single rock or tree borders on preposterous. He also somehow still has canned food available to him after all these years. Director Daniel Robinette’s debut feature only becomes more implausible when a hunter named Hank (Kareem Ferguson) stumbles upon Solomon—apparently the first human to do so in a good five years—and tries to help. There’s also a monster in the woods that shrieks at night and, just before Hank shows up, makes off with Solomon’s goat.
Tethered offers far too little buildup to the sudden presence of a lurking monster, and that it makes itself known almost immediately before Hank shows up seems far too convenient. Likewise, we don’t see Solomon struggle particularly hard to survive prior to this. Surviving alone in a house in an isolated stretch of forest would be difficult for any abandoned child, blind or not, but his disability simply seems like little more than plot device meant to quite literally keep him tied to this house. The film shows how he has a rig that allows him to split logs for firewood and how a bell alerts him when his bobber is pulled underwater while fishing. But other than that, it’s unclear how his home isn’t in need of repairs (or even cleaning), how he has clothes that fit, how he’s maintained a grip on sanity, how he isn’t feral by the time he encounters another human, how he really only appears worse for the wear by the presence of a few dirt smudges on his face.
Despite these flaws, the film does effectively create a compelling enough tone and offers some pleasant nature imagery. All of it may be wholly unbelievable, but the setting is stark and there are few bells and whistles to this simple story, keeping the film concise and focused even if you can see the payoff coming from a mile away. Without that opening voiceover, there would be far more mystery about how Solomon is in this predicament. Robinette adapted this film from a short of the same name, which appeared in the 2020 horror anthology film The Source of Shadows. Unfortunately, Tethered feels like just that: a good idea for a short, stretched threadbare in order to reach feature length.
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