Forest of Death (2023) by Brendan Rudnicki

Director: Brendan Rudnicki

Year: 2023

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Creature Feature

Plot:

Heading out to a cabin in the woods, a group of friends looking for a relaxing weekend come across a legend involving a shapeshifting creature living in the area but decide to ignore it only to eventually believe the stories are true and must find a way a fight back against it get away alive.

Review:

This was enjoyable enough and had a lot to like. Among the best aspects of this one is the cheesy and straightforward setup bringing about a fun time. The friend trip coming out to enjoy a fun weekend makes for a cliched if likable setup, providing enough of an excuse to get to know them as well as being a convenient means of allowing the local to meet up with the group and impart the local legend of the vicious creature living in the area. The exploits of this come off quite nicely being a believable starting point for the introduction of the creature action later on all gives this a decent storyline.

That turn, later on, is a solid one where it plays pretty well with the idea of the mysterious creature coming to prey on them. The initial build-up of the local legends and seeing how they’re starting to play out in their interactions while setting up the genuine confusion of the finale helps to enhance it quite a bit. The chases and confrontations that take place in the rental cabin as well as the surrounding wood are incredibly fun and manage to provide some cheesy but effective scenes that have some tension and thrills involved to end this on a high note. These factors give this one quite enough to hold it up.

There are some issues here that bring it down. One of the biggest aspects here is the lack of time with the creature as the main focus. Its presence is brought up early on as there’s the use of the local legend to initially screw with them but instead becomes real only to then have to wait until over the halfway point before finally making an on-screen presence. On top of that, the shapeshifting abilities mean that this one doesn’t even need to have the actual creature where it pulls everything off with doppelgangers so the main creature is brought aboard late with no presence anyway which all ends up bringing it down.

Overview: **.5/5

A decidedly decent genre effort that has some big issues here, there’s enough to like here to be somewhat worthwhile even if those factors it down quite heavily. Those who aren’t turned off by these factors or are fans of this style will have some fun here while most others out there should heed caution.