Director: Declan O'Brien
Year: 2009
Country: Germany/USA/Bulgaria
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
While en route to a prisoner transfer, a group of thugs and police officers find themselves stranded in the woods with a cannibalistic mutant that's trying to kill them off one by one, and must try to survive against the relentless killer.
Review:
There was a lot to really like in this one, as there are plenty of good parts here. One of the better parts is the rather fun action scenes here which give this one quite a lot of impressive scenes in here. The opening attack on the campers at the lake works well with the suddenness of his ambush out of the forest as well as the slaughter rampage against them, the car chase to force them into the predicament is a lot of fun and there's a lot of action-packed encounters in the woods as his guerrilla warfare style of attack is a great deal of fun which makes the film stand out. There are some great surprise ambushes where he attacks them getting out of the bus, the great one-off attacks at the tree trap, the water bank, the trap with the truck left on the road and the surprise appearance at the riverbank, as well as the multitude of fine brawls in the jungle between the convicts and their prisoners, gets rather fun as the finale is some incredibly enjoyable action movie brawling throughout the forest as the gang-leader takes him on after the abduction scene.
The ensuing rescue attempt at his cabin house results in more great fighting followed by the utterly unreal big chase scene at the end which all gives this a lot to really like about its action scenes. What tends to give this some really great suspenseful moments with the stalking here is the storyline gag of having the criminals chained together so they can't make an escape and are forced through the area to escape knowing there's a killer in the area which makes for a good time. This is all brought out by the fact that the gore here is simply off-the-charts, even with a low body count there's just a ton of bloodshed in here from the kills we do get and it's just a blast to watch as it's quite possibly the best of the series.
Still, even with these positives, there's the major flaw in the storyline here which doesn't really do much for the film as a whole. Unlike the others who had a family, this one is mostly hurt in the fact that it's just one mutant battling everyone and it really seems lazy to do this as it really goes overboard to make a superhuman killer just because there's nothing else coming along to keep the film going. The other one here holding this one back is the prisoners do get irksome after a while since they don't do anything but point guns at each other and curse, which gets old. Beyond that, this was still a great time.
Overview: ***.5/5
One of the better entries in the series, there's more to like here than expected to keep this one going for a few minor drawbacks that do manage to hold it down overall. Those who enjoy this style of slasher effort or are fans of the other entries in the franchise will have the most to like while those who are turned off by these factors should heed caution.
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