Director: Henry Darrow McCormas
Year: 2024
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Taking a trip together, a married couple staying at a remote camping site in the woods are shocked to learn that a series of disappearances around the area is the result of a tyrannical camp host who kills off those who break her rules about staying there and must get away alive.
Review:
This was a rather fun and solid genre outing. One of the finer features here is the way this one brings about the kind of starting point necessary to follow through with the premise. Getting an early taste of the type of character she is with their arrival at the site hoping for just a simple way to enjoy the sights while relaxing off the road during their journey, the fervent way she tries to defend the sanctity of the forest around her is rather fun. It all manages to bring together the type of storyline present here where the two of them are shown to be a somewhat understanding type that is willing to go along with the rules but is a bit freer with following them outside of her sphere of influence which is a factor that goes against the rest of the denizens camping around the forest which is where the main setup comes together quite nicely.
This makes for a fun time when it starts to turn into a slasher effort where the punishment for failing those rules means the participant is killed off in a gruesome fashion. Featuring a slew of strong attacks with the opening scene in the tent on the couple, the attack in the bathroom on the disrespectful camper, or attacking the one friend in their tent through an attack witnessed in the distance through shadows makes for some rather intriguing moments for some decent brutality along the way. The final half here, featuring a solid inverse of the type of confrontations normally associated with the genre as the discovery of her actions provides a rather different type of action against the killer than expected which allows this to have quite a lot to like about it.
There are some factors here that hold this one down. The main issue to be had against it is the overly dramatic way this one tries to make the killings justified, as even though they come off that way there’s still so much unnatural action taking place to try to make that the case. The majority of these encounters do feel more like pettiness and vindictiveness than anything, especially for the way most of the attempts are done even when characters do show remorse or are guilted into doing what she wants so it doesn’t make any sense why that occurs. Other times, the fact that her challenges to them are done for immensely petty motivations is as lame as the actions being committed causes everything to feel somewhat underwhelming, especially once the killings start since that just makes it so obvious she’s insane that something should’ve been done much earlier about it. Still, these are the factors that really hold it down.
Overview: ***.5/5
An overall fun if somewhat slightly flawed feature, this one has a lot to like about it which manages to be more than enough to hold it up over the drawbacks holding it down. Those who are intrigued by the concept, are general fans of slashers like this, or are fans of the release format will have the most to like while most others out there turned off by the factors mentioned should heed caution.
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