A woman finds herself trapped in an endless cycle of nightmares, from which she awakes in the woods outside her home.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Paul Bickel
Starring: Raya Miles, Paul Bickel, Tracie Thoms
It's a sign of how long it takes for indie filmmakers to get their work on screens that movies shot during the COVID lockdown are still trickling out in 2025. And with a narrative that takes in visibly changing seasons, writer/director Paul Bickel's lockdown-shot horror movie Our Happy Place reminds us of just how long we had to endure such isolating conditions.
Isolation is key to Our Happy Place. The film stars Bickel and Raya Miles as married couple Paul and Raya. With Paul confined to bed with an unexplained illness, Raya has become his sole caregiver as they isolate from the world and its viral threats in a remote cabin in the woods. One morning Raya is shocked to wake up in the woods that surround their cabin. The next morning the same thing happens. And the next. And the next...
Raya initially puts it down to sleepwalking. Following the advice of her friend Amy (Tracie Thoms), with whom she now communicates solely via video calls, Raya tries to take measures to prevent herself from leaving the house. She pumps herself full of coffee and sets an alarm to go off every half hour, but she still finds herself waking in the woods each morning, each time in a grave she's seemingly dug, which becomes less shallow each morning. Perhaps more disturbing is how each of Raya's rude awakenings are preceded by a nightmare in which she sees the ghosts of the various women whose faces adorn the missing persons wall of the local post office.
For a 90 minute movie, we figure out Our Happy Place's twist far too early, especially if we've seen a more famous horror movie from a couple of decades ago to which Bickel's film is heavily indebted. We put two and two together early on, so it becomes frustrating to watch Raya continually conclude the answer is "five" when it's so strikingly obvious. Our Happy Place may have been more engaging if Raya figured out the truth but struggled to accept it, rather than wandering around in a daze. Watching Raya go through the same experience of waking in the woods each morning eventually becomes repetitive; as do her video calls with Amy, which are used too conveniently as storytelling shortcuts.
The problem is that the repetition is essential to Our Happy Place's narrative. It's a feature that plays like a flaw. While it certainly hammers home the idea of Raya being stuck in a loop, something most of us felt during lockdown, it's just not an enjoyable experience for the viewer.
It's a shame that Our Happy Place's languid pacing makes it such a challenge, as there is some impressive low budget filmmaking on display. Bickel creates some creepy setups, one involving a phone's camera being used to see around a corner the standout, and the montage that spills the beans late on is an excellent piece of editing construction. Bickel also takes great advantage of visible seasonal changes, which adds to the sense of time being drawn out. What stands out most is the performance of Miles, whose remarkable change over the course of the film from strong-willed wife to hysterical sleepwalking victim reminds us all of how close some of us came to losing our sanity when the world shut down and the days all blurred into one.
