The Devil's Woods

I normally love Irish horror films, because normally for what they lack in budget they often make up for with good story. But this film was so awful that I couldn't finish it.

There's a rape scene from the word go. Which honestly frustrates me unless it actually adds to the story, and isn't just there because. The music is annoying, and one of the bigger factors to why I couldn't finish it. As we as the characters being really unlikeable.

The overall quality is really low, I'm sure teenagers with phones could probably do better. I honestly hated it, and didn't think it had anything redeeming, which honestly is a shame because the synopsis sounded interesting.

IMDB puts this as a horror and drama, but I would just go with horror. Anthony White directed and produced it, and Steven Cromwell who is one of the producers also acts in the film, so it's a low budget film. It was also filmed in Dublin and County Meath in Ireland, so the scenes outside are nice. The beginning bit, without giving anything away, was pretty gruesome for the two characters, and this is before the credits even kick in.

Love the fact when they walk into a local pub, as in very local, everything stops and it's silent. Been to a few myself like that, it can be a bit daunting.

Some special effects are lacking, at one point someone had died, we saw some blood, camera started moving to where it was coming from, then darted to the side of the body, without seeing the actual wound.

Music is good, but you can tell it is on the very low budget side, think it was 800 Euros. There is a scene at a house that before I knew how much it cost, you could just tell.

Ending was good, and they felt like real people, as in the actors. Anyone that has gone camping, or been to a festival or even just messed around with your friends, is that kind of feeling.

Horror may be back with a bang at the box office but the true aficionado knows the real thrills come down the dark byroads of indie cinema. The Devil's Woods definitely fits in the latter category. Opening with a quote on witchcraft courtesy of Emily Dickinson, the setting isn't rural 19th century America but the 21st century Irish countryside. In the hands of directory Anthony White it's a place of equally brooding Gothic menace. This is no slow building drama - we're set us up quickly and shockingly for what lies ahead.

The drama revolves around two couples setting out from Dublin for a music festival deep in the country (which, let's face it, for most Dubliners means anywhere beyond Naas). With the impeccable logic of a horror, they ignore all the pretty Tourist Board scenery in favour of some dark and eerie backwoods. Of course, they can't hear the incidental music we hear, but surely even they can tell from the zoned out, unfriendly locals and desolate ruins that it might be worth checking out the Yelp reviews before setting up camp for the night.

A strong cast, led by Stephen Cromwell and the ever-reliable Eoin Quinn, complimented by White's fluid directing style, build the atmosphere nicely, slyly capturing the undercurrents and tensions among couples as they are drawn further and further out of their comfort zones. Some well-tuned comic banter provides light relief from the shocks and well- timed twists.

The Devils' Woods doesn't take itself too seriously, but maybe the critics should. White has achieved impressive results on what was apparently a minuscule budget. This is gutsy, gritty, gonzo filmmaking, driven by a genuine desire to entertain. A strong ending brings all the threads together nicely. Among all the scares of the Devil's Woods, perhaps the biggest is the realisation that there may be nowhere worse to be trapped than in the great wide open.

This fits somewhere between a tantalising taster to raise funds and a finished project. There is too much padding for a full-length feature, but it is too good to be consigned to the graveyard of shorts.

Many of the actors have significant production roles; the two male leads act their socks off in a naturalistic way and also contribute songs to the score. A trivia item says it was filmed in 18 days due to actors' commitments, but they seem pretty busy doing script, stunts, soundtrack etc.

The cast were involved in developing the dialogue and it shows, for better and worse: very natural and realistic conversation is sometimes shattered by over-literal lines, clearly from the scripted element.

Camerawork is the weak spot. Washed-out colours, shaky motion in the action scenes, and unnecessary attempts to build tension by changing the palette to a red rinse. Some editing is suspect too - clips of car exhausts rattling to life only seem to be there to fill time. Short bookending scenes add little to the overall product, particularly the opener, but help stretch the runtime to over an hour.

I saw a film once in which a female actor's bottom got a credit. I wondered a few times if this camera operator was campaigning for a pair of white jeans to be similarly honoured.

No spoiler to say some of our hero's cop it, but the baddies show no consistency. If they have a common purpose it is not clear. It is more interesting when victims die in different ways, but not if we are to believe they die for a reason.

That said, there are very occasional flashes of something better: figures appearing in the background add suspense; there is a scene in a pub that evokes Straw Dogs or American Werewolf; other references include Duelling Banjos and a figure of Captain Spaulding.

This is a film that deserves a remake with some money behind it, but not in the US (please!).

THE DEVIL'S WOODS is a zero budget Irish horror film that might as well have been shot on home video because that's how cheap it looks. This certainly isn't a professional production as the standard of the script, acting, and camera-work are all below par. This is one of those films that you end up sitting through in the hope of something good happening, only to be frustrated by the time you get to the climax and realise it won't.

Things begin on a gory note with a murder in the woods before the film moves on to your typical group of drug-taking youths who decide to holiday in the countryside. I still don't understand they they constantly make these modern-day horror film characters so unlikeable; at least some of the characters in those 1980s slashers were fun, goofy, or friendly.

What transpires is plenty of shaky camera-work as characters run around and are menaced, along with endless padding such as scenes of the characters driving around in their car and the like. It's all rather pointless, and the dragged-out ending doesn't help. It's amazing that a film like THE DEVIL'S WOODS can play out without summoning up a single second of suspense. Perhaps they should have gone down the found footage route as that might have made it a bit more realistic.