An Open Wound: Tortured Queer Relationships in ‘Rift’ & ‘What Keeps You Alive’

Going off to a secluded location always leads to disaster. Characters swap the bright lights of the city for a respite far removed from civilization, unaware that danger lurks in the woods. Toss in a tortured relationship, and it’s the perfect storm. In celebration of Pride Month, let’s take a closer look at two such films, Icelandic horror/thriller Rift and Canadian psychological terror What Keeps You Alive. Both films depict the maddening descent into chaos, each detailing how a relationship meets a bloody, grisly end. Along the way, you’re whipped into an emotional frenzy.

In director Erlingur Óttar Thoroddsen’s Rift, Gunnar (Björn Stefánsson) and Einar (Sigurður Þór Óskarsson) have split, yet find themselves still emotionally attached and unable to move on. We first meet them months after the breakup when they both attend the same party. Out on the balcony, Gunnar and Einar nurse drinks and try to reconnect. But the conversation naturally veers into heartbreak. “I saw a movie the other day and it said time heals everything but wounds. It just stretches out the pain,” muses Einar, “and when everything else is gone with time, when you are gone away from me, or I away from you, then this thing here… this thing that was between us, that’s the only thing that remains. An open wound.”

In the present, Gunnar receives a cryptic call from Einar in the wee hours of the morning. It’s enough to alert him that something might be wrong. Despite it being the holiday season, he ventures back out to a secluded home, owned by Einar’s parents, where they spent so much of their time together. Gunnar hasn’t been back since the summer before, and the entire relationship comes flooding into his head. An array of beer cans and silence greet Gunnar, seemingly confirming his worst suspicions. He then stumbles upon a “portrait of an artist” video Einar filmed out on the bluff (known as the Disappearance Field), so his search takes him far and away from the house and leads him to Einar in a bright red jacket–a symbol threaded throughout the entire film.

Gunnar can’t be trusted, at least from the first-person perspective. Trauma from his youth informs how he perceives the world and relationships. A flashback to the summer before reveals that he once spotted a young boy named Leemoy (Einar’s childhood imaginary friend) that wasn’t actually there. That’s the first clue we may not be able to believe him in unraveling the mystery surrounding Einar–who goes missing in the night, never to be seen again. A series of eerie occurrences, like Einar sleepwalking and a weird knock in the middle of the night, also hints that something isn’t quite right with what we’re witnessing.

Rift feels like a fever dream. Gunnar wanders the property and the surrounding countryside, eventually coming across a row of abandoned townhouses. He doesn’t realize it at first, but it becomes the key to unlocking Einar’s strange behavior. Once Einar has gone missing, Gunnar discovers a videotape on which Einar has documented how he went to hook up with a man in one of the derelict homes–once again teasing what is actually happening. It’s only much later, when surveying the Disappearance Field, that he finds Einar’s cold, lifeless body. He’s wearing a red jacket, a signifier of death and delusion. Gunnar sees only what he wants to see, letting his paranoia and imagination run rampant. 

He becomes so consumed with Einar and their once-impassioned relationship that he fails to discern reality from fantasy. It’s now only a ghost haunting his every waking moment–and it nearly costs him his own life. An elderly gentleman, known for being “frisky” with the help, of a neighboring farm emerges from the shadows and wields a box cutter. He slashes Gunnar’s face before picking up a stray rock and swinging it into the back of his skull. When Gunnar awakens, the man has vanished, and he dials the emergency number. “I need to report a death,” he tells the operator. He then hops into his car and takes off down the gravel road. He might have survived, but a part of him died that day, from which he’ll never recover.

In Colin Minihan’s What Keeps You Alive, Jules (Brittany Allen) pays a similar price–just with her life. Driving out to Timber Bay, where Jules’ wife Jackie (Hannah Emily Anderson) owns a cabin nestled in the woods, the couple hopes to get away from city life and celebrate their one-year wedding anniversary. It’s a loving relationship, still waxing hot in the honeymoon phase. The two canoodle, share kisses, and embrace like it’s their first time all over again. Nothing seems amiss–until Jackie pulls out a guitar and sings a darkly gothic folk song with such lines as “I’ll tear out your eyes.” It’s enough to pierce Jules’ soul and send shivers down her spine, yet she shakes off the incident against her better judgment.

One night, a young woman named Sarah (Martha MacIsaac), who lives across the lake, shows up to check on the residence. No one has stayed here in months, if not years, she says, so seeing lights on alerted her. Sarah addresses Jackie as Megan, indicating that she changed her name for some mysterious reason. Sometime later, Jackie confesses that she changed her name once she realized she was gay (or so she claims) and sought to start her life over again with a clean slate. But something in her eyes deceives her, the tone of her voice teasing that the truth is something else altogether sinister. Jules expresses her frustrations and distrust over Jackie’s reasoning but soon comes around and believes her.

While target practicing with a rifle, Jackie regales a story about her father taking her hunting and how she killed her first bear. “He used to say to me, ‘You only kill what keeps you alive,’” she says. It also turns out Jackie has an expert aim, quickly knocking down three cans staged across the lawn. Jules is blown away but has yet to suspect anything. God bless–Jules’ naivety is her own undoing.

Jackie heads out to town the next morning and leaves Jules in deep slumber. Upon waking, Jules decides to row across the lake and pay Sarah a visit. There, she notices a photograph of Jackie, Sarah, and their friend Jenny and realizes that Jackie has never once mentioned Jenny. Allegedly, Jenny drowned during a challenge to swim across the lake–or so Jackie reveals. Things seem to be adding up, but Jules can’t see the forest for the trees. As they’re looking out over the lake and surrounding woodlands, Jackie shoves Jules from the cliff’s edge, her body tumbling into the brush and landing with a cracking thump. But she isn’t dead. Her head bleeds, and her arm has stretched out of its socket.

What transpires throughout the rest of the film is a disturbing cat-and-mouse game. Jackie, a raging psychopath, rehearses her 9-1-1 phone call and starts hunting Jules with a gun pumped full of tranquilizer darts. Jules won’t go down so easily, however, and fights tooth-and-nail to the very last moment.

The outcome initially leans in Jackie’s favor–she tosses Jules over the cliff for a second time, resulting in her head cracking wide open. Jackie makes her way back to the cabin, where she discovers Jules recorded a video message in the likely event of her death. In it, Jules confesses that she filled Jackie’s insulin shots with peroxide, which results in a stroke. Jackie dashes away from the cabin but falls into a nearby field, where she writhes in agony, foam dripping from her lips. It’s the kind of well-earned death that makes the film such a cathartic watch. What Keeps You Alive buries the viewer in tension, crackling and slithering under the fingernails. It also helps to see Anderson deliver such an unhinged, emotionally-scattered performance.

Rift and What Keeps You Alive play off one another, each undertaking queer relationships in a different light. Einar and Gunnar find themselves in the throes of heartbreak, navigating the troubling floodwaters that come with moving on and accepting the past. Whereas, Jackie and Jules fall into the craggy abyss of madness–with Jackie having nothing but murder in her eyes, an extreme and literal interpretation of “till death do us part.” Both films set their events in secluded locations, often feeling cut from the same universe, yet exhibit drastically opposing tones. Rift is doused in greys and muted colors, except for the bright red jacket and splashes of blood in the finale, to underscore the more somber, plaintive quality of the story. Meanwhile, What Keeps You Alive leans into earthy tones, highlighting the more explosive, blood-curdling sequences and the volatility of a relationship that was doomed from the start.

Braided together, the films explore the sheer humanity of queer relationships, from rose-cheeked desires to an inevitable collapse. Each turn packs an emotional sucker punch; the revelation of Einar’s death is devastating, as is Jules’ eventual murder. Neither skimp on yanking the rug from beneath your feet, that’s for sure. And unlike many horror films, there are no “bury the gays” tropes to be had. In fact, it’s okay for queer people to die and to be villains. It’s all about the text with which the story is written; here, the filmmakers pen their stories with depth and rich characterizations that move the story forward in very grounded, realistic ways. Simply put, Rift and What Keeps You Alive are the queer horror stories we deserve.

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