BlackWood

A fun watch ! Scenery throughout the Black Hills of South Dakota was beautiful. The drone shots were great! While some could may find fault here or there, for a first time foray into movie making it came out very well.

Films like this confuse me, I can't figure out why people want to watch this genre or what they get out of it.

It's set in 1800's America but in reality it's not a 'Western' in the traditional sense, it's a Horror but plays out like a fairytale ! I kept watching and hoping it would improve, I stayed with it mostly through curiosity just to see where the story went.

I found myself disliking almost all of the characters but that's not always a bad thing, sometimes the characters are just not likeable and it can take a good actor to play one. I disliked the story which was clearly based on old legends or possibly old wives tales and disliked the way the story was told through the actors who clearly could use a few more drama lessons and I really disliked the 'supernatural' aspect which was a complete failure in many ways !

There was mixed up clips and bad continuity, terrible lighting and 'fog' effects to create some kind of suspense and awful sound effects and worst of all was the ending which was a huge disappointment !

I have recently been interested in Western Horror movies so I have seen the best and worst of the category. While this certainly isn't in the top 5, I found the characters interesting and overall acting ok. Dutch (Bates Wilder) gave a good performance and carried the rest of the characters throughout. The all-to-used Wendigo is fine as the unexplainable legend causing havoc and it is necessary to take Two Feathers (Casey Birdingroung) explaining it in depth around the camp fire with a huge grain of salt. The scenery shot entirely in South Dakota is awesome like a western should be. I actually enjoyed watching this movie.

Sure, the synopsis for this 2022 horror Western titled "Blackwood" from writer and director Chris Canfield definitely sounded interesting. And I must admit that the high IMDb rating (8.1 as I sat down to watch the movie) that the movie had when I stumbled upon it helped convince me to sit down and watch the movie.

And yeah, "Blackwood" was a watchable movie, but it was nowhere near as great as the rating would lead you to believe. It was essentially just another tale of the Wendigo, but not a particularly exciting or thrilling one at that. And there are actually more interesting movies out there that tackle the myth of the Wendigo in a more entertaining manner than "Blackwood" managed to do.

The acting performances in the movie were good. I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble here, and that definitely counted for something and worked well in favor of the movie. Bates Wilder and Tanajsia Slaughter carried the movie quite well with their performances in the leading roles. It was a shame, though, that actor Glenn Morshower wasn't given a more prominent role in the movie.

Visually then "Blackwood" was okay. I mean, it wasn't a particularly outstanding movie in terms of special effects and make-up. And the Wendigo creature, no, it just didn't work out for me. So that was somewhat disappointing. But hey, "Blackwood" is not really the type of movie that needed impressive special effects to tell its tale, if you think about it. But the way the Wendigo was portrayed just wasn't all that good.

"Blackwood" is the type of movie that you will watch once and never again. I will say that just as quietly as the movie snuck in under the radar for me, just as quietly will it vanish into the mists of oblivion. This just wasn't a memorable movie.

My rating of "Blackwood" lands on a very bland four out of ten stars.

Kudos for not showing us Sears catalog cowboys. These guys were semi-authentic, bad teeth, dirty shirts. Their guns were a little too clean. The Indian girl may have been Indian, but she didn't really look it. She did look pretty raggedy, albeit her clothes were usually cleaner than she was and definitely department store front window stuff. OK, so much for appearances, the acting wasn't great. Too over the top. Everyone was trying too hard. The story was decent - cowboys out to steal gold from some prospectors run into the ghost of a cursed warrior. I don't think the writer/director really knew how to handle that, but it worked alright. You could tell this had a very constrained budget, but it kept me off the FF key for the most part. I'd recommend it for a cowboy, ghost spirit movie.