Sartaj Singh
Directed by Sara Lohman, ‘Secrets in the Woods’ is a chilling thriller film that follows a couple as they are stalked during a cabin getaway in the woods before terrifying revelations come to light. Sandra is overjoyed to be heading on a romantic trip with her boyfriend, Brant, to his cabin in the forest. However, she begins to notice a strange figure lurking just out of sight, but Brant dismisses her concerns as the apprehensions of a city girl. Upon reaching the cabin, she realizes that the stalker is actually Brant’s father, Langley, who has been using his son to lure women to the remote location.
Their intention is to have Sandra take up the role of Langley’s deceased wife. Before she can escape, Sandra is trapped, with her only hope residing in her sister Becky, who has been tracking her down since her disappearance. Originally titled ‘Off the Grid,’ the 2020 Lifetime movie narrates the harrowing tale of a malicious father-son duo and two sisters fighting for their lives in the wilderness.
Secrets in the Woods Draws Parallels With the Harrison Father-Son Crimes
The stories of women being lost or kidnapped in the woods make for a thrilling watch in TV and film, with examples such as ‘Alone,’ ‘Rust Creek,’ and ‘Eden Lake.’ Penned by Michael Shear, ‘Secrets in the Woods’ is a fictional addition to such works that are thankfully not rooted in reality. However, the true crime case of the Harrison father-son duo luring and abducting a woman and her daughters does bear some resemblance to the film. In Centerville, Utah, 22-year-old Dereck James “DJ” Harrison and his father, 51-year-old Flint Wayne Harrison, invited a woman and her four daughters to their house for a barbecue. DJ had known the woman’s daughters for several years and even occasionally picked them up from school.
However, the father and son had been using methamphetamine for days and had falsely begun to believe that the woman had reported them to the police. As the mother and daughters met the duo, they tied them up, kidnapped them, and confined them to their home. With the women bound using zip ties, Flint Harrison began hitting the mother with a baseball bat. With fight-or-flight instincts kicking in, her teenage daughters began to break through the zip ties and fight back. They knocked away a shotgun pointed at them while grabbing the baseball bat from Flint and hitting his son. The turn of events allowed them a window to escape, and they alerted the police as soon as they did.
The Father-Son Duo Was Brought to Justice
With the women having escaped, the Harrisons fled to Sublette County, Wyoming, stealing a UTA work truck and kidnapping UTA worker Kay Ricks. Upon reaching the outskirts of the city at night, they took a dirt road near an old bridge where DJ claimed that they planned to release Ricks since it would take him time to find help from there. However, Flint cut the worker’s throat, and as he began to flee, hit him on the head with an iron bar repeatedly until he died.
The two then headed to Flint’s wife’s and DJ’s stepmother’s home, where they picked up guns, ammo, and supplies to camp in the wilderness. They headed out to the woods near Half Moon Lake outside of Pinedale and set up camp. However, after a day, Flint left and turned himself in to the police while DJ slept. He also gave away his son’s location and the two were sent to Utah to face justice. In July 2016, Flint killed himself in prison, reportedly by hanging. DJ put most of the blame on the father, with authorities believing him to some extent, as Flint was a registered sex offender.
The younger Harrison pled guilty to kidnapping and threatening to kill five women and was sentenced to 20 to 22 years. He then faced the charges in Wyoming and agreed to a plea deal that saw him sentenced to spend life in prison without parole for the murder of Kay Ricks. Like ‘Secrets in the Woods,’ the case involves a son using his built trust with women to lure them for his father with malicious intent. As seen in the film, the sisters fight valiantly against their captors and manage to escape. The two retreating into the Wyoming wilderness draws another parallel with the movie, which, at the end of the day, has a fictitious and original story.
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