Promise

Kim Cifuentes, Mike Butler, Ron Berg, Ron Bowen, Seth Gandrud

A single car travels along a lonely mountain road in the mountains of northern Arizona, its headlights cutting through the thick shadows of the forest around them. Within the car are Jesse and Selene,...( read more  ) two young lovers escaping the uncertainty of their impending graduation for a night in an effort to reconcile their struggling relationship. Their romantic evening together becomes a harrowing nightmare as they are pursued off the main highway and onto a remote trail by a truck that bears down on them even as Jesse attempts to outrun it. Just as they are about to be overtaken by the vehicle, red emergency lights are lit up from its roof, revealing that they have just attempted to escape a State Trooper. Jesse pulls over, but the police vehicle continues past them on the road at breakneck speed, disappearing around a bend up ahead. They continue on their way, only to find that the State Trooper never made it to its destination; the Trooper is pinned down in his immobilized vehicle, ambushed by a paramilitary squad of masked assailants. Jesse hits the brakes but he's too late; his car goes over the same spike strips that the Trooper's vehicle did, and Jesse's immobilized car comes to a stop across the road from the State Trooper. The assailants turn their sights on Jesse and Selene, taking her from the car and knocking her unconscious as they chase him into the forest. By the time Jesse is able to double back to the crime scene he finds that Selene has been abducted and the State Trooper has been murdered and mutilated. Jesse sees that the Officer's weapon belt has been left intact but the radio has been destroyed. Thinking only of Selene, and overcome with guilt over leaving her, he takes what he can from the Officer's body and heads into the woods after her. Before the night is over he will be forced to encounter the brutal enforcers of the mysterious cult that set the trap for the State Trooper and are holding Selene captive. She waits for him in the confines of the cult's lascivious leader, holding onto the promises that Jesse has made to her and the belief that he would never abandon her. As he is forced to go to increasingly vicious methods to be reunited with her, he loses himself in his memories of their relationship, remembering why she is so important to him that he's willing to do whatever it takes to be reunited with her, even if he must pay the ultimate price to do so . . .