The forest doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t care about your excuses, your regrets, your carefully constructed lies. Out there, among the trees, the world strips itself down to its bones — dirt, bark, roots, breath. That’s where Marc Schölermann drags us with Bark, a taut psychological thriller that ties both its protagonist and its audience to the raw elements of survival, guilt, and reckoning.

It begins with a man bound to a tree — a literal prisoner of nature and a figurative captive of his own sins. Charismatic Nolan Bentley wakes disoriented, tied down in the belly of a remote German forest. Enter the mysterious stranger, a figure both tormentor and liberator, whose taunting presence digs deeper than any rope ever could. The question isn’t just whether Bentley can escape. The question is whether he deserves to.

Bark is at its sharpest when it leans into this elemental battle: man vs. nature, man vs. stranger, man vs. himself. Schölermann uses the forest not as a backdrop but as a psychological weapon — the trees loom like silent judges, the soil feels heavy with secrets, and every snap of a branch echoes like a gavel slamming down in a cosmic courtroom.

At its core, the film isn’t about knots and ropes, it’s about consequences. You can’t disassociate from your own past forever; eventually the demons scratch their way through the bark and claw at your skin. Bark dramatises that inexorable truth with sweat, soil, and tension so tight it feels like the trees themselves are holding their breath.

The performances ground it — Bentley sells both desperation and denial, while the enigmatic outdoorsman needles and prods until every scab of guilt bursts open. And though the film runs its tension on a fairly narrow track, the payoff is a psychological unearthing that hits with the force of an axe to the trunk.

The Prognosis:

Bark is not just a thriller. It’s a meditation on accountability, guilt, and the way nature can strip us bare until we are nothing but the truth we tried to bury. Some secrets don’t stay hidden. Some forests don’t let you out.

• Saul Muerte

Bark will screen as part of Dark Nights Film Fest on Fri 10 Oct at 7pm