GL84
Heading out into the woods on a camping trip, a group of friends stumble upon a young woman looking for her boyfriend and agree to help her only to stumble into a far more dangerous situation than they ever realized.This here is truly one of the worst, most wretched straight-up horror films in the genre. The fact that this one is so amateurish and hardly ever displays any kind of professional approach and feel is one of the biggest deciding factors about this one's lousiness, as the low-budget feel to the special effects and the visuals about this one are clearly evident quite early and often throughout here. This goes to really hammer home how utterly abysmal this is during the few moments where it's actually worth watching by showing how low the budget of this is since the other rather troubling aspect of this one is the fact that it's just so dull and boring that what does happen here is barely worth caring about. The first near-hour of this one is spent with these completely unappealing people who just sort of aimlessly wander around the woods just not doing anything that makes us care about either couple here. Not only are they blatantly stupid about splitting up away from each other when they have incredibly accurate evidence of something out in the woods with them, there's also other such scenes as the women letting their boyfriends go skinny-dipping with another naked woman they just met earlier in the day, ignoring all signs of danger to hide out in the creatures' lair as well as knowingly throw themselves at someone when they're in the situation with a shapeshifter, and that's just the start of it all in here. The characters in here are just plain stupid and they're not in the slightest bit interesting, so placing them in a situation where nothing happens and when it does there's just no professional appearance to it all really works against this one. A few encounters are quite interesting, as the struggle to dodge the creature in the woods trailing after them as well as the drowning sequence in the lake while the centerpiece visual effect of a man being turned into a tree does have a rather chilling air to them in theory which seem like something that really could've been used as the basis for a much better effort than this one is for that's about all that this one has going for it.Rated R: Graphic Language, Nudity, Violence and a mild sex scene.
killchav-1
synopsis: a group of friends go to the forest to camp and are preyed upon by an evil force born from the forest. well it does what it says on the tin. if you watch this expecting a classic then you have the wrong mindset for it. this was never meant to be a classic, this was never meant to be the godfather, just a fun little trip for the viewers. the scripting, dialogue and acting aren't very good at all but it can all be taken in fun as the film expands it's throwaway characters and the one's we're supposed to care about. this isn't done well but somehow i couldn't help but care what happened to them. the camera-work is basic at best with the director assuming a half 'last house on the left' gritty realism and half 'the Blair with project' uber realism feel. it works in places and falls short at others. saying that, it doesn't detract from the basic experience of the film. no arty, film school camera tricks here. i read in fangoria that the film was shot on 35mm and considering, it's a good transfer. colours are bright and there are only a small selection of blurry frames. the transfer is quite pleasing to the eye with a wealth of colour and brightness to feast your eyes on. i do recommend turning both the colour and brightness on your TV down to enjoy the supple tones of the transfer. the score is typically suspenseful and if i am honest quite typical of a genre film. it didn't really do much for me at all. good composure but ultimately too formulaic to bring tension. this is the kind of film which you should go into expecting nothing more than cheap thrills. if you are looking for more then i could recommend a lot of films but if you just want to watch a horror film which provides the basic needs of a horror fan then go for this. you won't remember it and you won't talk about it but in my opinion it's not a waste of 90 minutes so much as a giving away.
kaufman2000
Kim Newman recommended this in the last issue of Empire. He also recommended 100 Feet so the less said about that man the better. This has precisely two moments where the director actually achieves some semblance of 'horror' and one moment where he clearly blew the budget on one special effect. These three scenes collectively last for about ten minutes of screen time and whilst some understanding of how to frighten the viewer is present they are not worth watching the film for. For the rest of the time you are left with a meandering plot that truly contains some of the worst acting I've ever witnessed and that's coming from a fan of low budget horror/indie/B-Movies for 20 years. The quality of these performances are akin to watching a play performed by an below average GCSE drama group. The acting and dialogue are so poor in fact that I wondered if it was intentional. Sadly the film has a disturbing lack of awareness and is seemingly not tongue-in-cheek in its approach. This is the first review I've ever written but it's all come to head lately as I drift from one disappointing new horror film to the next mainly due to the untrustworthy or shilling production company reviews from the IMDb user comments. It's a joke honestly.As Macready says 'Trust is hard thing to come by these days'
xanther1971
I don't even know where to begin with this movie. The other post's on here must be from part of the film company or the directors themselves , because this movie is horrible.From the acting, which is some of the worst you'll watch, even for a low budget horror film. To the story itself, a wood witch who turns people into trees?I should of known right from the start when "Milk" ,yup that's his name, climbs a tree to get "bird eggs" for them to have for breakfast. This coming from a guy who said in the beginning of this crap that he really hasn't been camping before.Or when "Webb"(really creative names btw) drowns while swimming with a naked girl,who happened to show up at their camp in the morning and cook them breakfast, all the while his (Webb) girlfriend is watching from the beach while he swims with naked girl.I mean, even in Junior High School you would never get away with that with your girlfriend. I don't know who they made this film for, but do yourself a favor and don't let it be you. You watching this film is the only "horror" you'll get from this film.