Undertaking an annual tradition, a group of friends decide to head out to a remote island for a special bonding camping trip together which quickly turns into a disaster when they find the area is home to a mythical creature hunting them down one by one and must find a way to leave alive.
This was a decent enough if strongly problematic genre effort. Among the better features of this one is the rather solid and intriguing setup that provides a way to get the guys into the hunting grounds of the particular creature. Seeing the original intentions of the setup being to innocently undertake a bet that sees whether or not they can survive on the island throughout the night, the group goes through the motions of how to stay there and how to get through the situation, which provides a slew of generally intriguing elements to emerge. That fuels the films' best aspect here with the constant creature attacks giving this quite a lot to like with the deformed, inhuman creature chasing the group through the woods using the darkness, unfamiliar environment, and general chaos of the situation into a stellar advantage as these scenes work incredibly well in the general concept. Beyond this, though, there are a lot of problems with this one. The biggest detriment is the film's immensely flawed and unlikable main group of supposed friends who go through the film never once making themselves appealing or ingratiating to the audience. Spending the first half following the playbook for every suspect friend group shown in these kinds of films with the situation never allowing them to act like friends since they openly mock, belittle, or make jokes at each other's expense, it becomes quite difficult to enjoy their time together. That continues into the rest of the film where the group sniping at each other, shooting down genuine plans to get to safety to argue about nonsensical plans, or just doing the exact opposite of common sense in the scenario by drawing attention to themselves yelling at each other, or alerting the creature to their location. The other big flaw here is the series of obvious low-budget limitations present that end up lowering this one overall. The fact that the creature, despite being given a cool look, shows off a flimsy and ineffective construction involving the cheap costume trying to bring it to life with the whole thing kept off-screen so frequently, it highlights how bad it looks. Given that the near-majority of the scenes in the woods take place in indiscernible low-level light that makes it next to impossible to determine what's happening with everything way too dark to make out, the effectiveness and tension of the film drops significantly during these parts. Also, there's the surprisingly underwhelming and flat-out lackluster twist ending for what the creature's purpose is all about, and the entire point of the trip comes into question for no reason, making this one quite troublesome overall.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.
