Straight off the bat, I’m gonna tell you, I absolutely fucking adore this film.

I can’t quite put my finger on why I love it so much, other than it’s a fantastic piece of work, without giving away so much of what makes Split Rock one of the most suffocating films set in vast wide open spaces you are ever likely to see. You want spoilers? Go elsewhere. Here I deal with feelings, and this movie made me feel as if I was drowning in the greatest cosmic horror since Lovecraft shuffled off this mortal coil.

I am a huge Lovecraft fan, but I’ve always felt that any movie adaptation of his work has failed to deliver. They’ve never quite captured the sense of utter dread that his books and short stories managed to convey, that terror that creeps into your bones and just sits there.

Whether he meant to or not, Ryan Glover does that with a consummate ease that is just as disturbing when you consider this is an entirely original story. Seriously, whoever is planning the next attempt at bringing the Cthulhu Mythos to the screen needs to give the director’s chair to Mr. Glover as well as the writer’s pen.

The setup keeps things tight. A small survey crew is out in the middle of nowhere, doing routine field work in a dead stretch of badlands, when they dig up a strange, magnetic stone slab embedded in the earth. Almost immediately, the isolation sets in. Equipment fails, signals die, and an unseen, ancient force starts working its way directly into Lauren’s head. No stupid monster costumes, no cheap jump-scare bullshit, just a handful of people slowly drowning in the realization that something massive, old, and completely indifferent has just noticed them.

The cinematography of Nikolay Michaylov plays a huge part in this. Shooting on Super 16mm Kodak stock and squeezed into a massive 2.66:1 aspect ratio, the film looks incredible. Instead of relying on pitch-black rooms or narrow hallways to trap you, the film turns the endless, wide-open landscape into a cage. The grainy 16mm texture gives every acre of dirt and sky a heavy, tactile weight. You aren’t watching people hide in the dark; you’re watching tiny human specks get swallowed whole by the sheer, indifferent scale of the earth. It adds another layer of tension to a film that is already so taut that you feel if someone jumped out and yelled Boo at it, it would drop dead from a heart attack.

The performances of the cast are essential to this. The dynamic between Clark Backo and Drew Ray Tanner is fascinating to watch in a way that is rare in these kind of films. Normally, I find myself screaming at the screen when it is obvious that one of the main leads is madder than a bag of rabid badgers that have just been poked with a very pointy stick, but here, I felt no need to do that. Is Lauren crazier than a drunken hatstand with a shotgun? Abso-fucking-lutley, but where as Ben wants her to leave, you want her to run headlong into the madness because, like her, you have to know.

For all its atmosphere and ability to make you feel as uncomfortable as humanly possible, when Split Rock goes hard, it goes fucking hard. Again, without wanting to ruin this with spoilers, you’re just going to have to trust me when I tell you that the horror in this horror movie is very fucking horrible.

And that’s what makes Split Rock stand out so much. Where most horror movies try to scare you with monsters, gore, or whatever cheap parlour trick they can cook up in post-production, Split Rock achieves something far worse, it reminds you how completely insignificant we all are in the grand scheme of things, and leaves you sitting in the dark with that awful realization long after it’s over.

If you’ve been waiting for a film that actually understands what pure cosmic dread feels like, stop reading this and go watch it.