YMMV / The Hike (2023)

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • When Joni shoves Vilhelm over the cliff edge and he grabs her arm, pulling her over too, was he just trying to grab anyone or anything nearby in a desperate attempt to save himself? Or he did he do it intentionally?
  • Given the suicidal thoughts Joni had been having (including thinking that her friends all have important reasons to stay alive and so they matter more than her), her immense guilt and self-loathing for sleeping with Liz's husband (which Liz had only just discovered) and how calm and accepting she is of her impending death, it's possible to interpret Joni sacrificing herself to save her friends from Vilhelm as a Heroic Suicide.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • There's an early scene where the group have to cross a river. Helena stubbornly tries to wade across despite Liz's warning the current is too fast here and ends up struggling, even though the water is barely waist high. She gets stuck halfway, but isn't able to turn back. She then slips and falls face first in the water, with her heavy pack weighing her down and preventing her from getting up. If it weren't for Joni risking her own life to rush into the river and pull Helena upright, she likely would've drowned. It goes to show just how quickly and easily things can go wrong in the wilderness if you're not careful, with even something as deceptively simple as wading through knee-high water being potentially dangerous.
  • Maggie is lagging behind the others and stops to pee, going a little off the trail to do so. She calls out to the others to tell them, but they don't hear her and keep walking. When Maggie tries to return to the trail, there's no sign of her friends and in her panic she loses the trail as well, leaving her completely lost in the middle of the Norwegian wilderness. This in and of itself is a scary situation, but it's made worse when Maggie spots Erik watching her, he being a strange, off-putting man suspected of being involved in his girlfriend's disappearance, with said girlfriend bearing a noted resemblance to Maggie. Erik even calls Maggie by his girlfriend's name before offering to help her get back to the trail. Maggie doesn't have much choice but to accept, but she starts to suspect he's leading her further away and grabs hold of a rock just in case. Erik notices the rock and confronts her, with Maggie unconvincingly trying to lie she just picked it up from curiosity. Erik demands to know what she's heard about him, then abruptly disappears into the trees when Vilhelm and Maggie's friends arrive. Although Maggie is unharmed, she's shaken by what happened, especially when Vilhelm confirms that Erik was leading her in the wrong direction (as Erik has grown up in the area, he should know the right way).
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The pacing in the first half of the novel is fairly leisurely; aside from a handful of intense or creepy moments (such as Helena nearly drowning after slipping over in a river, or a lost Maggie encountering a man suspected of killing a missing woman), nothing much happens save for the four women trekking through the woods and having mundane personal conflicts (which at least helps establish their individual personalities and relationships to each other). The pace picks up considerably after they stumble on a cave used to smuggle cocaine and realise a landslide has destroyed their supplies and blocked the trail, with the second half being where most of the action and danger occurs.

---