Director: James Kondelik
Year: 2026
Country: Canada/USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Hoping for a chance to reconcile, a brother takes his sister and his friends for a hiking trip into the woods to help them get over their troubled relationship, but when he falls into a pit trap in the woods and find themselves stalked by a strange killer must find a way of getting out of the woods.
Review:
For the most part, this was a solid if underwhelming slasher. The best aspect of this one is the immensely effective series of stalking scenes that take place in the woods, which gives everything a frantic, intense energy. After the first half spent on getting them out to the woods and trying to work through their issues, the integration of the pit-trap that shows up inside the woods, and the few bits we get about the killer roaming the area, the second half turns into a frenetic, brutal slasher involving the group being ambushed and attacked. That the killer goes after them even though there’s more in the group and they’re not split up, with the long-range weaponry coming into play almost as much as the hand-to-hand stuff, launching from the treeline to attack them out in the open or set up some chaos to pick them off one by one. From leaving them in a burning tent to having to get out alive, trapping them in bizarre forest traps to keep them in one place to even taking on the lone guy trapped in the pit, this is a solid mix of survival thriller and hard-hitting, straightforward slasher.
While that all works incredibly well for the first half, there are some immensely problematic factors here that keep it down. The main thing here is the unnecessary and overlong running time that’s far too egregious for a film of this style. The series of scenes in the first half tries to get them out into the woods, where it explores the family dynamics to a degree that makes it immensely difficult to get on board with their characters anyway, just drag out the first half to this one quite heavily to the point that its in-depth nature of everything is hard to get past. That comes about with the look at the family members who are hard to get into, from the constant whiner who complains about everything, the sister’s self-centered determination to continue torturing herself psychologically for the accident, and the brother’s girlfriend who spends half the time arguing the wrong thing to keep them together who are all used to dwell on the running time at the same time as the group’s futility at wandering through the woods just gives everything the kind of half-hearted approach that holds the pace down for the first half.
The other issue with this one is the generally underwhelming and really lacking killer that offers a lot of brutality to overcome some immensely troubling background work throughout here. While there’s a lot to like with the way he strikes and attacks others, the action scenes on display are used to overcome the type of confusing work done to make us understand who he is, since the only thing we get about him is a wholly underwhelming prologue that tries to tie in this strange sense of trauma recognition that offers something as a motivation but still feels immensely underexplored. This is helped along by his cunning and brutality, but the fact that he doesn’t offer up much in the way of explanations or rationale for the need to hunt down strangers in the woods is a big issue to get over in here. The other issue with this one is the survivor count in this one, with way too many people coming out of this alive and highlighting how such a lack of kills transpire that it needs to invent several random strangers to come into the mix to have enough, since there are way too many who get away. These all manage to hold this one down overall.
Overview: ***/5
A brutal if troubling killer-in-the-woods slasher, there’s enough to like here to not be a total waste, as the majority of the positives are the more important matters, but some of the flaws are still detrimental. Those with an interest in this kind of genre fare, who are curious about it, or who aren’t bothered by the negatives, will have a lot to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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