Deliverance

Four Atlanta businessmen—Lewis, Ed, Bobby, and Drew—decide to canoe down the Cahulawassee River before it is dammed. Lewis leads the trip, a confident outdoorsman with a bigger ego, while the others bring mixed levels of experience. They glimpse a remote wilderness that will test them far from city life.

On the road to their launch, Drew performs with his guitar, dueling a local banjo-playing boy. The locals seem friendly as some dance to the tune, but the boy refuses to shake hands afterward. The scene foreshadows the friction between city men and rural locals.

The four men split into two canoes, putting distance between them as they travel downriver. The separation creates isolated segments where danger can strike with little warning. The river and wilderness begin to assert their unpredictability.

Ed and Bobby encounter a pair of mountain men in the woods: one carries a shotgun and is missing two front teeth. Bobby is forced to undress, and the unarmed man rapes him while Ed is bound at a tree. Lewis arrives and kills the rapist with his bow, and Ed seizes the shotgun to escape.

The men argue about what to do with the attacker and the incident's aftermath. After a heated debate, Ed and Bobby side with Lewis, deciding to bury the body and continue as if nothing happened. They bury the attacker and resume their river trip, carrying the weight of their decision.

As the lead canoe nears a perilous stretch of rapids, a collision shatters the boats and throws the men into the river. Lewis breaks his thigh, and Ed and Bobby are washed ashore with him in a gorge, while Drew disappears in the chaos. The river's violence marks a grim turn in their journey.

Ed climbs to a hidden vantage above the gorge and hides until morning when a man appears with a rifle. He fires, killing the man but lands on one of his own arrows, wounding himself slightly in the process. He discovers the dead man has dentures, realizing he may have killed the wrong person.

Ed and Bobby weigh down the dead mountain man's body in the river to hide it from authorities. They later do the same to Drew's body when they encounter it downstream, ensuring nothing will be found. The men carry the grim burden of their decisions as they continue downriver.

The trio reaches the small town of Aintry and take Lewis to the hospital. They craft a cover story about their supposed death-and-survival adventure to avoid suspicion of murder. They hope the authorities will never unravel the truth.

Sheriff Bullard and Deputy Queen doubt their story but lack evidence to arrest them. The deputy's tie to a hunter who disappeared adds tension to the case, fueling suspicion. The sheriff tells them never to do this kind of thing again and to stay away from the area.

Ed reunites with his wife and son, returning to a fragile normal life. He remains haunted by what happened and struggles to separate memory from illusion. The events cast a long shadow over his homecoming.

A bloated hand rises from the lake in Ed's nightmare, a grim symbol of the violence and fear that will haunt him. The final image suggests that the wilderness experience left a psychic scar as large as the landscape itself.