Bosque de sombras

Okay, we all know the plot of a movie like this. Some sophisticated city folk go out to the country and are set upon by local inbreds who proceed to rape and kill them.

They retroed the movie to 1978, because if set today, the heroes would call for help on their cell phones and the story would be over.

This movie also had the worst set of fake and bad accents I've seen. Besides Gary Oldman effecting a British accent, we have the two women, whom you can barely understand. (Fortunately, the direct to DVD release has subtitles.

The movie is ponderously slow. The story is unoriginal and you don't really like the characters.

I saw the director's short film which was not good but at least interesting and much better than this full-length movie "Bosque de sombras". Gary Oldman is obviously the only star in this movie but contrary to what the other reviewer said, I believed the Spanish cast was good. It was interesting to hear Gary Oldman speak some Spanish and I give this movie 3 stars because of Aitana Sanchez-Gijon and him.

Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, who is an excellent Spanish actress that I last watched in "The Machinist" with Christian Bale and was also in other English language movies like "A Walk in the clouds" plays Gary Oldman's wife. She can express mystery and emotion without saying any dialogue. I think she is one of the best but underrated Spanish actresses today. Lluís Homar was brilliant, in my opinion, and also the little girl.

I was mixed about Paddy Considine. I think he is a good actor but next to Gary Oldman, he was less interesting. In "Cinderella man" with Russel Crowe, he was excellent and also in "In America," but in this movie, he was only interesting when he was not in a scene with Gary Oldman but in scenes with the other actors, he steals every scene. I think that shows how strong Gary Oldman is that brilliant actors like Considine seem to fade next to him.

This movie is the first English language movie for Virginie Ledoyen since "The Beach" and I think it is fair to say that she will always be known as the girl from "The Beach" because she is a bland and boring actress. Even in french films she is dull because she lacks the range that other actresses her age have. In this movie, she is not at all convincing as her character. She "acts" better in her 30-second adverts for L'Oréal.

The biggest problem of this movie is the writing and the directing. Serra and his co-writer lack the skill in writing a coherent and original scénario. Stealing from other movies was a bad idea. There should have been more development in this to make it a real movie. Also, Serra uses the camera techniques of 70's directors which is OK at first but when he does this all the time it is distracting and does not serve any purpose except style. We all know it is set in the 70's but the directing should always be related to the story because style is cheap and easy and anyone who works only on style with no script should just direct commercials and music videos. Skip this movie and rent "Straw dogs" instead.

Two couples—Paul and Isabel (Gary Oldman and Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) and Norman and Lucy (Paddy Considine and Virginie Ledoyen)—travel to a remote region of Northern Spain for a relaxing break and a spot of hunting (the guys having somehow brought a pair of shotguns with them through customs), but instead they incur the wrath of locals after freeing a young girl they find chained up in a run-down cabin.

The obvious inspirations for this rural survival thriller set in the late 70s are Deliverance and Straw Dogs (with Ledoyen in the Susan George role, teasing the drooling locals), although there are striking similarities to countless other examples of the backwoods genre, old and new. One might expect the presence of acting heavyweights Oldman and Considine to compensate somewhat for the derivative nature of the script, but even class performers such as they can do very little with what amounts to a collection of tired clichés presented with little flair or imagination.

The Backwoods also suffers from awkward performances from the leading ladies (this may be because neither actress speaks English as their first language), poor pacing, a lack of genuinely disturbing violence (surely a prerequisite of the genre), and a weak denouement that leaves the viewer feeling more than a little cheated.

I'm seriously confused about how to properly write a critique on "The Backwoods" without being either overly negative or positive, but nevertheless express my respect to the cast and crew for the film they intended to make. This is a genuine throwback to the era of 70's exploitation film-making, with a truly grim atmosphere and uncompromising violence, but at the same time it's completely unoriginal and derivative. I've read an extended interview with writer/director Koldo Serra, in which he declares that he doesn't understand why so many horror movies are being remade nowadays even though the originals aren't open for any kind of improvement. That might very well be true, and Lord knows I wholeheartedly agree with such a statement, but Serra goes so far in 'bringing homage' to the original classics that he practically copies them as well. "The Backwoods" isn't a remake of any existing 70's flick, but it easily could have been, since it bluntly borrows elements from "Deliverance", "Straw Dogs" and "The Wild Bunch".

Cleverly set in the year 1978, so that the script at least didn't had to take into account malfunctioning mobile phones and navigation systems losing their signal, "The Backwoods" revolves on two couples spending a little vacation deep in nearly impenetrable woods of the Spanish Basque region. Paul, the oldest and wisest of the four, bought the old house of his grandmother there and wants to show the beautiful region to his wife and friends. After some very unfriendly welcoming vibes in the local bar already, the quartet faces the ultimate confrontation with the primitive backwoods community when Paul and Norman discover a neglected young girl chained up in a hidden cabin. The girl is the outgrowth of a humiliating family scandal, and the local patriarch Paco so desperately want to keep her existence secret that he mobilizes the rest of the locals for an old-fashioned manhunt. "The Backwoods" is an uneven mishmash of a film in which downright powerful sequences are altered with dreadful clichés and predictable plot twists. The gritty and relentless atmosphere of 70's survival flicks is marvelously re-created, but the script doesn't have the courage to genuinely shock the audience with twisted little details or perverted undertones like they did in the old days. The filming locations are stupendous and the producers managed to attract a fantastic cast (including the brilliant Gary Oldman and Virginie Ledoyen). It's really a shame this film doesn't feature anything truly unique, because I really wanted to like and recommend it.

If you've ever been in the middle of taking an exam which requires you to write an essay of which you're fully prepared for but test time runs out before you can complete your thoughts and put them down on paper, that's how you'll feel when this movie ends. I just wanted that little extra something that was missing. It had tension that felt very real and fine acting, especially oldman, and had a constant upbeat pulse throughout the film that kept me interested. But it was a mad dash towards what I hoped would've been an incredible ending but leaves me "out in the rain". Definitely worth a look-see though. Not nearly as bad as what I've been reading.