Director: Brad Twigg
Year: 2017
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Arriving at a secluded spot in the woods, a woman takes a group of teens out to a trip attempting to have them reconnect with themselves, but when they start disappearing around the woods they realize there’s a cannibalistic serial killer out in the woods with them hunting them one-by-one and must try to get away.
Review:
This one wasn’t too bad of a backwoods slasher effort. One of its strongest elements here is the film’s central and single-minded purpose to showcase constant interactions between the oblivious victims and the maniacal killer. The opening series of encounters between the various hikers showing each of their run-ins with the killer living in the woods over the years which sets the stage for some stellar series of brief slashing encounters that focus on random people coming across the killer and getting killed in graphic manners. This ends up giving off a wholly full-throttle pace and tempo that moves this along quickly into the next situation nicely and makes for a fun time here.
That manages to highlight the film’s other great quality, it’s over-the-top gore and graphic kills. From getting scalped with an ax, having a pitchfork rammed through their neck, bung gutted with an ax or getting knifed through the jaw, the kills here are quite fun and exceptionally graphic. The vast majority of the kills and encounters here result in vicious fountains of blood-spray that couldn’t possibly exist yet it does so here as the blood-flow from these wounds creates plenty to like here. The random encounters to enhance the body-count do this one well as they generate some solid action here as well, managing to really bring out some great aspects to this one overall.
There isn’t much really wrong here. Among the film’s few problems is the completely scatterbrained and simplistic storyline that barely looks to hold itself together. The fact that it’s doesn’t even introduce the campers at all or what they’re trying to do, merely content to feature them hanging around far more than the other random interlopers that are hiking around supposedly abandoned woods that it finally dawns on you they’re the main characters in the running order. That’s rather strange to have the lead characters be dumped on-screen without any kind of purpose or distinguishing marks for what they’re here for or even who they are since we don’t know they’re names immediately and they only pop out as main characters through the amount of time spent with them as a default.
The other real issue to be had with this one is an ending that doesn’t seem to know when to end. The encounters with the shocking amount of family members that emerge out of the woodwork to continually threaten their escape attempts go on far too long than necessary with these seeming like an opportunity for some supposedly shocking actions but come off as just lame. The epilogue featuring the extra characters encountering yet another member that we’ve never met before for what seems like a lame twist to the whole affair has no real place here is that it’s just tacked on for no real purpose in how it connects to the film as a whole. Combined with some of the same problematic issues that continually plague low-budget indie efforts that some might have an issue with, these are the film’s flaws.
Overview: **.5/5
While there are some issues here with its rambling pace and a finale that doesn’t know what to do with itself, the rest of the film is a fine slice of indie-horror greatness by unleashing over-the-top aspects that are much more worthwhile to the film as a whole. Give this a shot if you’re a fan of indie-styled films or low-budget slasher aficionados while those with no appreciation for that style at all should heed extreme caution.
Comments
Post a Comment