Director: Jordan Miller
Year: 2024
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Heading out into the woods, a group of friends looking for a fun weekend manage to get interrupted when a surprise intruder forces them into an escalating series of violent encounters to deal with everything turning the weekend in the woods into a bloodbath as they try to stay alive.
Review:
Overall, this was a fairly solid and enjoyable indie slasher. One of the better features here is the strong and rather appealing storyline that comes off better than expected in the indie style. The opening series of interactions gives this the kind of starting point for his backstory and starts off with the knowledge about his intensity and ferocity quite early on while using that backstory to offer a kind of fourth-wall-breaking setup about the group traveling to the location. The way it constantly tries to bring them into a traditional slasher film setup by encouraging the stereotypes to come into play, whether it’s the group meeting the locals to get a hint of the surroundings before they arrive at the cabin or the various interactions with each other while at the house manages to fill in the necessary characterizations while also letting the other factors come together rather well.
That leads incredibly well into the second half where the trip turns sour following the discovery of the stranger who turns up at the house seeking revenge for an unknown scenario. Already having met him earlier which helps to add some credence to the the raving persona in this secondary encounter that it escalates to a point where it’s quite likely to believe the situation. With this letting everything get further out of control involving people thought to be dead turning out to be alive, convenience allowing for misinterpretations to run rampant leading to the bloodshed that follows as the misguided scenarios bring about some great stalking scenes around the cabin where it offers up several brutal deaths as well. It all has quite a lot to like overall.
There are some big drawbacks on display. The main feature here is how misguided everything feels where it’s based on misinterpretations that don’t feel natural or logical in the slightest. The group initially defending themselves and dealing with the intruder is fine, but even the first reason for his attack on the group is entirely misguided and immensely petty so that never makes sense, and with the group continuing everything afterward due to their own stupidity at not bringing logic and reasoning it would’ve rendered a lot of the freakouts more believable. That might be missing the point but it’s somewhat hard to care about some of the scenarios present when everything is the result of such rampant stupidity and illogical convenience is a bit underwhelming.
The other real drawback here is the film’s bizarre setup that’s completely all over the place in terms of pacing. It spends a great deal of time setting up the backstory of the killer in the area with a fantastic build-up and series of encounters with several other random strangers that paint the picture of him being the main protagonist only to then get no mention of anything after that point which means all that time spent setting him up means nothing. That also applies to all the general interactions with the friends who are given plenty of time to get used to each other but are all pretty much used to taking up the timing which is underwhelming. Combined with some minor low-budget limitations, there’s some factors to lower this one.
Overview: ***/5
An intriguing if somewhat flawed indie slasher effort, there’s a lot to like here for what it has to offer even though there are some issues present that do hold it back. Those who are fine with this style of feature or are intrigued by its concept will have some fun with this one while most others out there might want to heed caution with it.
Comments
Post a Comment