Significant Other

There is a specific kind of silence found in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest that feels less like peace and more like a held breath. It’s a claustrophobic openness—towering Douglas firs acting as bars to a cage you walked into willingly. This is the playground for Significant Other, a film that starts as a Sundance-adjacent relationship drama and ends up somewhere much, much weirder. I watched this on a Tuesday night while my cat was aggressively trying to eat a crinkly piece of plastic wrap in the kitchen, and honestly, the domestic chaos only heightened the feeling that something small and annoying was about to ruin everything for our protagonists.

Released as a Paramount+ original in late 2022, Significant Other is a product of our current "Direct-to-Digital" landscape where mid-budget gems can bypass the box office hunger games. In an era where "elevated horror" has become a bit of a dirty word—implying a movie is too posh to actually give you a jump-scare—directors Robert Olsen and Dan Berk (the duo behind the snappy 2019 thriller Villains) decide to have it both ways. They give us the prestige-style character study, then gleefully douse it in sci-fi pulp.

The Proposal from Hell

We meet Ruth (Maika Monroe) and Harry (Jake Lacy) as they embark on a multi-day backpacking trip. Harry is the human embodiment of a "Live, Laugh, Love" sign—an earnest, slightly needy outdoorsman who thinks a mountain peak is the perfect place to pop the question. Ruth, meanwhile, is a vibrating wire of anxiety. Maika Monroe has become the undisputed queen of the modern "something is watching me" subgenre (see: It Follows and the excellent Watcher), and she plays Ruth with a jagged, defensive edge that makes you wonder if the "Significant Other" in the title is actually her greatest threat.

When Harry finally gets down on one knee at a scenic overlook, the movie does something brilliant: it focuses entirely on the horror of a mismatched proposal. The social awkwardness is more agonizing than a slasher’s blade. Jake Lacy has weaponized the 'disappointed boyfriend' face into a legitimate survival threat, and for the first thirty minutes, I was convinced I was watching a psychological breakdown. But then, Ruth finds a cave. And in that cave is a glowing, gelatinous substance that definitely didn't come from a North Face catalog.

A Genre-Bending Pivot

I won't spoil the pivot, but I will say that the film shifts gears with the grace of a rally car taking a hairpin turn. It moves from a tense study of commitment issues into a high-concept survival thriller that toys with identity and "The Thing"-esque paranoia. This is where the contemporary context of the film really shines. In a post-pandemic world, we’ve grown used to movies with tiny casts and isolated locations, but Olsen and Berk use that limitation to create an intimate, nasty little playground.

The creature effects and "threat" design are handled with a refreshing "less-is-more" approach. The budget isn't Marvel-sized, so the filmmakers rely on unsettling sound design—wet, squelching noises that suggest something biological and wrong—and the natural, oppressive beauty of the Oregon woods. The cinematography by Matt Mitchell captures the forest in cold, desaturated tones, making the greenery look like it’s bruised. It’s a sharp contrast to the bright, saturated "forest porn" we usually see in travel vlogs, reminding us that nature doesn't care about your engagement photos.

The Maika Monroe Factor

If this movie landed ten years ago, it might have been a cult classic on DVD. Today, it’s a "scroll-stopper," a film that succeeds because it understands how to keep a viewer from checking their phone. Much of that success rests on the shoulders of its leads. Maika Monroe is doing subtle, physical work here; her face is a map of trauma that slowly transforms into something much harder and more dangerous.

Then there’s Jake Lacy. After his turn as the world’s most annoying honeymooner in The White Lotus, he’s mastered the art of playing men who are "nice" until they aren't. He plays with the audience's expectations of the genre, leaning into the "Final Girl" tropes and then subverting them with a wink. The chemistry between the two is genuinely unsettling because it feels like a real relationship that was already rotting from the inside before the monsters showed up. It’s a cynical, funny, and occasionally brutal look at how well we actually know the person sleeping in the sleeping bag next to us.

Significant Other is the kind of lean, 85-minute thriller that we need more of. It doesn't overstay its welcome, it doesn't try to set up a "cinematic universe," and it manages to be genuinely surprising in an age where trailers usually give away the ending. It’s a dark little campfire story that asks a very modern question: is the stranger in the woods more dangerous than the person you’re planning to marry? If you’ve got an hour and a half to kill before your next flight or bus ride, give this one a look. Just maybe don't watch it right before a romantic camping trip.