hellholehorror If you have the patience to watch The Woods then there is a lot to gain. This is not your usual witch affair and contains slow boiling intrigue and great storytelling. The pace is a bit too slow and there is too much emphasis on thriller rather than suspense for my taste. Still a very good psychological film for the patient among us.

Jeffrey Burton "The Woods" is a good horror movie that has a great sense of humor. Ignore the low rating.There is a mutant strain of IMDb 'critics' who just live to crap on people's work. You can see their handiwork on classic movies that clearly deserve a 9 approaching 10 but are sandbagged by these idiots into the 7s.While 'The Woods' may not be a classic, it is an entertaining movie with good direction, good acting and good visual story telling. It also doesn't take itself as seriously as most more recent independent Horror movies do.It's the story of a young rebellious girl who gets sent to a girl's school and finds out all is not as it seems. Lucky McKee directs and I think he has a future as a high level Indy Horror filmmaker.It gets 4 points from me right off the bat just by having Bruce Campbell playing a pivotal role in it.Don't listen to the haters. Give it a try.

bowmanblue The front cover of The Woods reads 'And Bruce Campbell,' so I watched this. Bruce 'the chin' Campbell is a legend, providing one silly, tongue-in-cheek performance in horror films after another. However, it's worth noting he's barely in this and, when he is, he's not saying much.The Woods is about Heather - a young girl who gets sent to a private school by her (seemingly naturally) evil mother and silent father (Bruce Campbell incidentally). There, she gets picked on by a clichéd bully and starts to wonder if her teachers have ulterior motives for the pupils.The teachers mainly stand around in groups, facing the same direction and staring - always a sign that they're up to something. One occasionally twitches. This may be trying to add 'character' to them, but if you can watch without laughing you're a more composed person than me.The Woods is like a kind of remake of Italian horror classic 'Suspira,' as it's about a girl starting a new school run by witches. Soon, Heather's classmates start disappearing (luckily their parents don't seem to ever bother much that their children have vanished without a trace and nor to the police). The film's pretty slow, but deliberately so, doing its best to built tension and get to know the characters.There's nothing particularly wrong with The Woods, apart from the fact that it doesn't really offer anything new. If you've seen a reasonable amount of horror films, you've basically seen this. It's nicely directed, the sets are fitting and it picks up pace towards the end. I just felt it was too little too late.Give me Evil Dead any day.http://thewrongtreemoviereviews.blogspot.co.uk/

morrison-dylan-fan During the last 15 minutes of Alan Jones and Kim Newmans excellent commentary to Dario Argentos amazing supernatural horror film Suspiria,they start talking about the constant recent attempts of getting the film remade.Part of the way through this part of the conversation,Jones mention that he has just remembered that,Suspiria has actually been already remade under the title The Woods.Going downstairs to check up about the film online,I noticed that my dad had left by the side of the room some DVDs that he had picked up earlier in the day.As I got to the bottom of the small pile,I was shocked to find that he had actually just picked up the film!.Feeling that some luck was on my side,with how fast I was able to find the movie,I decided that I would watch it right away.The plot:With having recently tried (and failed) to burn the family house down,the parents of Heather Fasulo feel that its in everyones best interest that Heather is sent to a boarding school.When Heather and her family arrive,they are greeted by the head teacher Ms.Traverse,who gets rid of even the slightest worry that the parents may have,by telling them that their daughter is going to receive the best education,which is truly out of this world. Almost as soon as her family have left,Traverse tells Heather that in order for her to achieve the full marks at the school,she must participate in some "special" lesion.The first lesson involves Heather randomly putting a circle around some strange objects on a paper.Later that night,Heather has a terrible nightmare,where she talks to a badly injured girl,who attempts to attack her.Talking to some friends about it,they tell her that her dream might have been caused by the legendary "curse" (which they all talk about,in a very sarcastic manner)The girls claim that the curse started hundreds of years ago,when three mysterious girls suddenly ran out of the woods.With the teachers feeling pity on the girls,they gave them the very kind opportunity of being guest at the school.Over time the girls started acting stranger and stranger,until,they revealed themselves to be witches.Suddenly,the witches ganged up and made all the pupils possessed.Having possessed the students,the witches ordered the pupils to grab all of the teachers and behead them.This led to the witches taking complete control of the school,which they still hold to this day.Whilst all of the other pupils started laughing about "the silly folklore",Heather started to feel terrified that some strange sounds she has been hearing from the woods,and some of the teachers behaviour, (especially with how much they were pushing her to do some very weird lesions)might be a sign that the folklore (and the three witches) are still very much alive... View on the film:Although the outline of the film does have some small elements of Argentos Suspiria,I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the films storyline, was much closer in tone to the excellent Invasion of the Body Snatches plot,with screenwriter David Ross and director Lucky McKee having all of the teachers (and some of the students) brilliantly acting slightly "off",which helps to create a fantastic feeling of paranoia for the film,due to McKee making it (mostly) very tough to guess how many of the students the witches have under their control. Whilst the twist ending does not make much sense to what has previously been happening in the film,McKee is still able build a pretty good amount of suspense,with the scenes of Heather in the girls dorm being a particular highlight,as the wood itself starts to extend its grip on the school,which allows for some very fun,sudden jumps,as Heather begins to realise that the disturbing nightmares shes been having are actually real. Final view on the film:A very entertaining paranoia-horror film.