Director: David Ryan Keith
Year: 2015
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Heading into the woods for a party, a group of friends looking to set up a weekend camping trip are unnerved when some of the party go missing, and the search for them results in the group stumbling upon a deranged serial killer thought to be a local legend and must escape his barbaric hands to get away alive.
Review:
This was a pretty solid and enjoyable slasher effort. Among its better features is the engrossing and highly impressive setup that gets the group into the woods and into the killer’s trap. The start to this one, with the arrival of the group to the woods and how they’ve all come together for the local festival honoring the anniversary of the killings, serves as a fun nod to the traditional type of genre efforts from the past. With the backstory told to enhance their understanding of the killer by giving a series of brutal and graphic sequences showing what he did in the past that spawned the local legend they know him for, this section of the film has a lot to like about it.
As well, the film really scores well with the use of some fun scenes of the killer in action. The series of stalking scenes is undoubtedly the best, taking the lush woodland setting and the unexpectedness of the killers’ sudden appearance to good use in providing some solid slasher sequences with plenty of fun, gore-filled kills. Although the scenes of the killer holding the random people hostage inside the house and torturing them keep the brutality intact, the scenes of him stalking everyone throughout the various farming rooms and levels of the decrepit house give this a nice bit of atmosphere and suspense. Given the creepy and unsettling mask on display, there’s a lot to like here.
There are some rather big issues to be had here. Its biggest issue is the main lead, who is utterly insufferable, acting like a spoiled princess who’s too good for everything else around her, complains about everything and anyone around her, and is just generally unpleasant to be around, as she provides no real redeeming qualities for her presence. More to the point, it also makes the question of her status in the relationship seem quite unreasonable with the way she acts on the trip, and really should’ve been dealt with sooner, really dragging the experience of this one down.
The other issue here is the decision to focus a large majority of the film inside the farmhouse and the underground maze of rooms where the killer lives. This had been way more fun as a killer-in-the-woods throwback, yet the decision to go away from that into the bizarre world of him kidnapping people and torturing them which makes no sense. This is quite unexpected behavior and has no storyline significance, so it just makes for an odd transition to do away with what was working well to change it up into something else entirely. As well, with the overlong finale featuring some clunky stalking, way too many clichés, and some misused location work that ends this on a downer note, there are some issues to be had here.
Overview: ***/5
A fun if somewhat flawed slasher throwback, there's a lot more to this one than expected, which holds it up quite heavily over a series of flaws that keep it in the mid-range tier in the genre. Those with an interest in this style of feature, are curious about it, or aren't bothered by the flaws, will want to give it a shot, while most others out there should heed caution.
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