Shadow

The soldier and biker David (Jake Muxworthy) is serving in Iraq and misses biking. He rides his bicycle in Europe heading to Shadow and when he stops in a bar, he meets the beautiful Angeline (Karina Testa). The troublemaker hunters Fred (Ottaviano Blitch) and Buck (Chris Coppola) bother Angeline and David and the bar owner defend her.

When David camps in the woods, the wind carries his tent and Angeline invites him to share her tent with him. On the next morning, they ride their bicycles together and enjoy the wilderness. When Angeline sees that Fred will shot an animal, she cries and he misses his shot. Fred and Buck chase the couple with their truck and the quartet have accidents and need to walk through the woods. Sooner they are captured by a weird man that lives in an isolated house and are tortured in the basement. David manages to escape and helps the hunters to leave the place, but they are hunted down by the freak. When David wakes up, he learns that the reality is worst than his nightmare.

"Shadow" is a creepy version of Adrian Lyne's "Jacob's Ladder", which is inspired in Claude Chabrol's "Alice ou la Dernière Fugue"; later, "The Jacket" used the same storyline again. "Shadow" has a promising beginning but the story is not original – the writer used not only the foregoing idea, but also a rip-off of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or any other sub-product - and the conclusion is very disappointing. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Shadow – Na Escuridão" ("Shadow – In the Darkness")

If you liked Wolf Creek, then this funny little movie (and it is short for a movie) will probably please. It manages to remain serious enough throughout to genuinely scare, although at the beginning, to my mind, there is a slight caricature issue. I may be wrong about that, as this is an American movie made by Italians, so I'm not sure what was the intended audience. There is some beautiful forest to be ridden through, though the cameras used could have had better colour, and there was no artistic cinematography which would have been nice, although the shots of the deer were OK. Is it scary though? The first half is action, light on the dread, the second half is dripping with dread, and light on the action. It is frightening, absolutely, but I feel, in my humble opinion, that there was much more scope to develop more creepiness and tension, and I certainly wouldn't have minded the movie going a bit longer so as to enjoy that. It's like a painting that's only 80% and needs some art direction in any case. Shadow has great ideas that are slightly undernourished. Similarly the soundtrack was really original and modern, until the final frantic stages leading to the credits, when it devolved into something off-kilter and slightly distracting. Again, an unfinished painting. The flashbacks needed work, I thought, and to be more convincing. OK, I'm being really picky. Basically, Shadow is a good horror movie with plenty of skin to crawl and seat to edge onto, with excellent acting, good looking leads, and a profoundly devilish evil that's worthy of a minor award. Yea!

I was compelled to write a review after seeing some negative reviews. A lot of the other reviewers were expecting some kind of Italian horror like argento etc. When they didn't get what they expected they wrote a bad review.

I cant stand those geeky Italian horrors from film makers like argento so my views are not tainted by it! just because the directer is Italian doesn't mean its going to be similar to those films dur.

This film was nicely filmed in beautiful locations with some smooth editing and quality camera work. I was interested from start to finish in what was happening. For those reviewers who said the film was mixed up obviously didn't get what it was all about. I wont ruin it by telling you.

There was some gruesome imaginative torture porn for those of that are into that sort of thing but what kept me interested was the creepy atmosphere and how invested i was in the characters struggle from the start of the film right through to the end.

In summary really not bad for a lower budget film, a directer who knows how to capture the moment and not give us enough time to question what just happened before the next drama ensues! This is something Hollywood fails with again and again with every genre so i gave it an 8 / 10

I was sort of iffy about watching this due to the rating and such and I try not to watch trailers or read reviews so I don't get my hopes up but decided to watch the trailer and was surprised. The beginning of the movie is slow but is done excellently. The story line was a great idea and was also done great. The kill scenes were not gory or gruesome but I let it slide. I for once didn't expect the ending or the killer in a foreign horror movie and was glad I didn't. To cut it short this was a great way to spend some time and I would love to watch it again. I give "Shadow" an 8 out of 10.

~Joe

I found this movie surprisingly amazing! It was a total fluke that we watched this as we settled in to watch a movie way too late and wanted to pick one quickly. To our luck we ended up picking this one based on the cover (Netflix).

Two people alone in the woods anger two crazy hillbillies. Sounds like your typical slasher film right? Half way through the movie they add a little bit of a twist and add some ghosts stalking everyone in the woods. Sounds like a ghost movie now? Well now add in some crazy looking guy that could be the long lost Uncle of the monsters from the movie "The Descent" who is obsessed with the holocaust and Dr. Mengele's human experiments. What do you have now? With all mentioned above it may sound confusing but it isn't when at the end the Directors message packs a hard punch with an incredible twist.

I love when I watched a movie expecting nothing too special and end up watching a great flick like this one. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time in this film, wonderfully made horror film, the type of perfect horror movie that sucks you in.

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