Thomas Bezucha gravitates towards families under strain, noticing small changes of behaviour within an ensemble. We are less persuaded by UNTAMED, where the landscape holds our attention more reliably than the mystery.
Fi1m perspective
In UNTAMED (2025), the Yosemite wilderness holds our attention while the investigation struggles to keep it. Michael McDonough’s cinematography gives the landscape scale, and the detectives seem a small concern beside it. We were frustrated by how often the police scenes felt interchangeable with those of a series set somewhere else; the views had promised something more particular. Bezucha, who directed the first two episodes, helps establish a place the mystery does not make enough use of.
His feature films suggest why the people might interest him more than the mechanics of a case. He wrote and directed his debut, Big Eden (2000), then explored family tensions and acceptance at a holiday gathering in The Family Stone (2005). After Monte Carlo (2011), Let Him Go (2020) took him towards darker stories of kinship and loss, adapting Larry Watson’s novel as a neo-western thriller. Television work has since included episodes of Fargo (2024). These are changes of genre for a director whose recurring subjects are families and the small ways people reveal themselves within a group.
The attraction of UNTAMED is not confined to the scenery. Eric Bana and Lily Santiago make an engaging investigative pair, though this is shared work, with Neasa Hardiman and Nick Murphy also directing. It would be unfair to assign either the actors’ appeal or the mystery’s weaknesses to Bezucha alone. The difficulty is that the familiar detours and forced turns demand patience without giving this partnership a sufficiently distinctive case.
Todd Fjelsted’s production design gives the police work a credible setting, but too little of that work feels specific to Yosemite. Bezucha and his fellow directors keep the wilderness prominent without making it a consistent source of suspense. There is enough care here to make the lack of tension disappointing. If he returns to this sort of thriller, we would want the location to shape the police work, not just surround it.
Biography
Thomas Bezucha is an American screenwriter, director and producer. Born on 8 March 1964 in Amherst, Massachusetts, he graduated from Amherst Regional High School and studied fashion design at the Parsons School of Design. He later worked as a creative services executive for Polo Ralph Lauren and Coach before entering filmmaking.
Bezucha wrote and directed the features Big Eden (2000), The Family Stone (2005), Monte Carlo (2011) and Let Him Go (2020). He co-wrote the screenplays for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018) and The Good House (2021). His television work includes directing and writing episodes of Fargo (2024) and directing episodes of the series Untamed (2025), on which he also served as executive producer.
