Written and directed by Thomas Sainsbury (who also acted in the film as the lead protagonist), Loop Track is a survival thriller that talks about the fear and paranoia in the human mind and the urge to fight those negative emotions. The story follows an introverted, socially anxious Ian, who decided to go hiking in a deep, dense forest to detach himself from the mundane world, but amid the darkness of the forest, he saw something that his other fellow hikers couldn’t comprehend. Let’s dive deep into the story of Loop Track to find out what exactly Ian saw behind the trees.
Spoilers Ahead
Plot Synopsis: What Happens In The Film?
Loop Track began with Ian in his car, arriving near the forest, when an indigenous woman knocked at his car window and started talking gibberish, which somehow frightened Ian and made him uncomfortable. Soon we understand that Ian was a quiet and nervous kind of guy who was extremely anxious around people, especially if they’re strangers. However, probably his decision to go hiking was some kind of break from the regular world he lived in or the claustrophobic situation he dealt with in the city. Perhaps he went hiking to face his ultimate fear and try to get over it.
On his way to the forest, Ian first stumbled upon a guy named Nicky, an overenthusiastic, blabbermouth hiker soon became curious about Ian’s life. From Ian’s conversation with Nicky, we came to know that Ian was separated from his wife, and left his career as a businessman. After that, Ian and Nicky came across an Australian couple, Austin and Monica, who were on their honeymoon. At night, all four of them took shelter at a cabin in the forest. While Nicky was getting along with the couple pretty well, Ian had hidden himself in a corner. He had brought meat, which he tried to cook, but out of panic, he burned the food. Monica and Austin were a little bit judgmental of Ian for this weird behavior, so he decided to leave the cabin right away. However, outside, Ian saw a giant shadow behind a tree, which freaked him out, so he rushed back to the cabin and decided to stay there for the night.
What Happened To Monica And Nicky?
The next day, the four of them left the cabin and traveled through the forest to another cottage nearby. There they found some bags, but there were no people to be found inside, which worried them a little. Ian began to get suspicious of Nicky, and because of the tension, he couldn’t even sleep at night. Ian repeatedly tried to communicate with the group that he could sense something dangerous was around there in the forest, but no one paid attention. At night, Nicky came to his aid and asked Ian to pop some sleeping pills to get some proper rest. Even after taking the pills, the anxiety was still kicking in, prompting Ian to look into the bags that were found in the cabin. He pulled a digital camera out of the bag and found that the bags belonged to two women. However, he also found Nicky’s picture in one of their photos. Ian connected the dots and came to the conclusion that Nicky had probably killed these women, but before he could confront Nicky, Ian fell to the ground unconscious.
The next day, Ian woke up and told Monica and Austin that Nicky couldn’t be trusted. Even Monica and Austin began to question Nicky’s presence, but before things could come to a head, those two women came back to the cabin to take their luggage. Everyone judged Ian and his paranoid behavior, but Nicky, realizing that Ian must have been dealing with some internal problems, forgave his actions. Ian also realized that he was unnecessarily questioning Nicky, so he decided to be more expressive and friendly with him. After the two girls, taking their luggage, took off in a different direction, Ian, Nicky, Monica, and Austin began their journey towards the rainforest and waterfall. Halfway through, the couple decided to part ways to have some time to themselves, while Nicky and Ian managed to arrive near the waterfall. However, back in the forest, when Ian lost his torch and went deep into the bushes to fetch it, he started once again to see a giant bird-like figure. He rushed back to Nicky and tried to warn him, but Nicky once again thought Ian might be seeing things. After that, when the two of them sat for a while and Nicky needed to answer nature’s call, the bird-like monster preyed on him, eventually killing him.
Ian didn’t witness Nicky dying in front of his eyes, but he could sense that something terrible had happened to him. Monica and Austin arrived there in the meantime, but they didn’t want to include Ian in their group anymore. They were extremely frightened to see Nicky gone, and now they believed that Ian might have had something to do with it. However, as Austina and Monica decided to leave Ian behind, the bird monster captured Monica and ate her bottom half. This time Austin and Ian witnessed it all and realized that Ian hadn’t just been seeing things all along, but that it was actually a beast preying on them.
How Did Austin Die?
Back in the cabin, Austin finally believed Ian and they decided to remain in the cabin to save themselves from the beast. But the beast soon appeared outside the cabin and tried to break into the room. The beast managed to get into the cabin and killed Austin; however, as it went to attack Ian, he fought with the beast with great courage and strangled it to death. After the beast died in the hands of Ian, he finally had some courage to go outside into the forest. With no one alive, Ian, alone, went out of the cabin and ran towards the exit. But on his way, he realized that he had killed only one of the beasts, while others were still alive and roaming around the jungle. One of those beasts attacked Ian and even injured him badly, but Ian managed to defeat the creature once again and ran away. In the concluding scene of the film, we saw Ian finally out of the forest, stopping a car, and asking for help.
Did Ian Face His Fear?
Loop Track is a survival psychological thriller that shows Ian as a mentally tormented persona who fights his negative emotions, especially fear. He had lost many things in his life, including his wife and his career, so fear of losing things always occupied his mind. The constant fear led to his paranoid personality, which made him socially awkward and nervous around strangers. His fear of attachment was also causing him to isolate himself, constantly urging him to think that he was a worthless being who didn’t deserve happiness. It’s his voices in his mind that eventually led him to see the giant as his biggest fear, but fortunately, at the end of the film, we saw Ian facing his fear and learning how to tame it. However, the trauma and fear never truly leave us forever, but human beings eventually learn to deal with them. Even though the giant beast died in the cabin, the fear continued to exist in the form of other beasts that were waiting outside the cabin to prey on Ian, but Ian eventually eluded those creatures and came out of the forest victorious.
