Starring: Kai Devani, Elizabeth Weisbaum, Grayson Brengle, Holly Burns, James Frey, Ben Fritz.
Director: Jason Boritz
Another movie that I'm going into entirely blind. I actually decided, purely for shits and giggles, to not even read the back of the DVD box. I bought the film as part of a stack of modern films with the express desire of doing an end-of-the-year run for my forthcoming "Best Horror of the Year" post and mostly just liked the box art. I was kind of hoping for a low budget Little Red Riding Hood/Werewolf film but I'm not getting that vibe from it. But who knows? It's clearly low budget, but the production values aren't bad enough to make me nervous yet.
I'm actually wondering if this is a backwoods redneck survivalist film. We have some hunters setting some booby traps in the woods, and some kids driving down a deserted road...so are the hunters gonna hunt the kids? Maybe, maybe not. That isn't the kind of movie I'm hoping to watch at the moment, but we'll see. The kids seem pretty interchangeable: one of the guys is clearly cheating on his Girlfriend with one of the other girls in the car, one of the guys has sleep problems due to his Dad's death...
The hunters aren't hunters. Apparently they're mercs, and they're staking out a cabin. Maybe I shouldn't be jumping to conclusions after every scene and just let the movie happen, yeah?
Okay, the elements appear to be: the hunters are attacking the kids, who are now holed up in a cabin after their car was taken down, and the driver was dragged into the woods by what seems to be a monster. At least I assume it's a monster of some kind because, well, there are been shaky POV shots subsisting of some growling and stuff.
The group of kids is fairly generic, complete with the group asshole who is throwing blame around, drinking, and generally being an upstanding citizen. He is, of course, the one who has been or plans to be cheating on his Girlfriend...and she's apparently kinda hip to that whole thing, despite being the "panicky idiot" of the group. Actually, the asian girl that the big meathead has been bedding might even be the heroine, though my money is on the blonde(since she and her boyfriend seem like the nice ones, and the blonde might actually have a terminal disease).
Ouch. Awkward scene where panicky girl is told by d-bag boyfriend to "get a grip" and so she repeats "Get a grip" about eight times in a row. Trinity, the asian girl, is definitely not the heroine. But the movie is spending a lot of time on this angry love triangle thing and not nearly enough on getting the ball rolling on the actual greater conflict. But Sarah, the wronged party, did just run out into the woods and our Mercs are closing in on her. Not particularly bright of Sarah, though: I know you're upset right now, sweety, but there are people who want to kill you out there.
These kids are really kinda dumb. It always does bother me when a character has a pretty decent plan(in this case, hide out in the cabin-which their assailants have yet to try and enter-until daylight and run for it then), and another character basically gets all sarcastic and bitchy about it like it's the dumbest thing they ever heard.
Ooh, maybe there is a Werewolf! The mercs are discussing werewolf saliva as some sort of cure-all...so maybe the kids are bait for a Werewolf so the mercs can capture or kill it? Oh, wait: the blonde has a terminal disease. Werewolf Saliva cures disease. The large jerkwad thinks the main guy is hiding something...is this all part of a big master plan to cure his Girlfriend? Mmmmmaybe.
Plot dump. Looks like my theory was correct. The land has Werewolves, the lead wanted to get some wolf spit to try and cure his Girlfriend...the land has a grisly back story about Native American slaughter. They haven't quite explained why the guys outside are doing what they're doing, but our lead is apparently deciding it's time to run through the woods to the car...? That doesn't make a lot of sense.
So, yeah, the mercs are using the kids as Werewolf bait. Seems somewhat circumstantial. Did the mercs know the kids were coming? Did they cause them to come? What is that all about? Why is a movie about a Werewolf so damn slow and why are the characters so dull? Starting to bug me a little. Especially now that the movie has gone in the direction of a character reading from a found diary that details Werewolf antics that would almost certainly be more interesting than what is going on on the screen. Glad you told me about it, movie.
These people do not respond properly to mortal danger. They were flat out told to run in a straight line out of the damn woods but instead stop to bicker, examine corpses and generally just do a lot of yelling. Finally the last of the hunter dudes shows up and actively reminds them of their original objective: keep. running. morons.
Terminally ill girl is clearly now a Werewolf...hopefully we'll get to actually see one. We got a quick reveal of our main guys actually back story...and then she starts to transform(with quick cutaways and stuff). Oh, hell, then we jump to the next morning, a dull voiceover and...what the hell movie? This could have been a film that worked if you had some better pacing and some decent ingenuity.
Final Thoughts: Mediocre, irritating and frustratingly filled with actual potential that gets completely dashed rather quickly. Just...a lot of missed opportunity here. Disappointing.
Final Rating: Two Stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment