On a bitterly cold winter's day in 1851, a young woman stumbles up to Red River Fort, a rough frontier establishment on the borders of the Canadian wilderness. Her claim is that she has murdered her husband... but who is she? Who is her husband? She seems to be hiding something, but what? Faced with the difficult decision of whether or not to charge her for a murder that only she seems to know about, the fort's constable decides to track down her identity and her story.

Edge of Madness is visually and technically polished, with cinematography that evokes the barrenness and utter solitude of the Canadian frontier; we soon see that under these conditions, a person could indeed turn to madness and murder. The story development moves along mainly through a series of flashbacks from Annie (Caroline Dhavernas), the young woman who has confessed to the murder, while the constable's investigations turn up clues as well. Director Anne Wheeler brings out good performances across the board, with all the actors bringing their characters realistically to life.

Ultimately, though, while Edge of Madness is an involving film, the story doesn't provide the payout that it seems to be leading up to. The intertwined frame story of Annie in jail and Annie's memories is skillfully handled, creating a strong sense of anticipation and curiosity. What really happened out on the homestead? Is Annie lying or telling the truth? Either way, what prompted her to make the difficult, almost deadly journey to the fort by herself in the middle of winter? To a certain extent, the story does make a few twists, but they aren't nearly as interesting as they could have been. There are also a few points during the film where the story gets a bit muddled, probably due to the attempt to maintain the mystery as long as possible: we see the constable's investigation proceeding but the results are not shown, even though it would make more sense to reveal them.

Annie's potential as an unreliable narrator isn't exploited; it would have been more interesting if we were in doubt as to whether or not the scenes we're shown from her memory were true or imagined. In this case, though, the film opts for the more straightforward approach; it's not badly handled, but it's not as gripping as it could have been.

Where Edge of Madness shines is in its depiction of the bleak Canadian landscape and the harsh lives of the 19th-century pioneers who struggled to carve out farms and homes in the unforgiving wilderness. The film is very forthright (and to some, perhaps very shocking) in its plain depiction of the lives of these characters, starting with Annie basically being sold into marriage (albeit willingly; it's barely hinted that she's an orphan, and in that day and age, young women with no family would have had very few options) and continuing with her life on a new homestead, where we see just how difficult and deadly life was for these pioneers.

The DVD

Video

Edge of Madness is presented in a very attractive anamorphic widescreen transfer, preserving the film's original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The picture is very sharp and clear, due in no small part to the total absence of edge enhancement. I've been pleased to notice this lack of edge enhancement in several Lions Gate releases recently, so hopefully we'll keep seeing these nice sharp transfers from them in the future.

A very small amount of noise appears in a few shots, but other than that, the print is impressively clean; there are no print flaws apparent, either. Colors are excellent, with skin tones looking natural, and the subtle, muted palette of white, gray, and brown used throughout the film looks beautiful. Contrast is excellent in all but one or two very dark scenes, where the image becomes a little too soft and gray. All in all, it's an excellent transfer.

Audio

The Dolby 2.0 soundtrack for Edge of Madness ends up ranking just about average. The overall sound is clean and free of distortion, but the balance of the different elements of the soundtrack isn't as good as it could be. On various occasions throughout the film, dialogue was a bit difficult to hear due to the music or background noise of the film being too strong in proportion to the actor's voices.

Extras

There are no special features on this DVD.

Final thoughts

Edge of Madness is based on the short story "A Wilderness Station," by Alice Munro, and in fact the title of the original story is more evocative of the what the film is like than the more thriller-sounding "Edge of Madness." In terms of a suspense plot, the film promises more than it delivers, but even so, the story is interesting; added to that is a compelling look at 19th-century life on the Canadian frontier. With a very nice anamorphic widescreen transfer giving it a substantial visual appeal, Edge of Madness is recommended.