Silent Retreat

Several team-members of a media company take a retreat in the Big Bear area of SoCal, along with the wannabe hottie's beau. A dubious caretaker lurks nearby. When people start coming up missing, the questionable history of the renovated lodge is unearthed.

"Silent Retreat" (2016) is a micro-budget Indie with the typical issues thereof, but it includes practically all of the staples required in a cabin-in-the-woods flick. Critics complain about "bad acting" and how all the characters are "unlikable," but this is not true. The script is well-written and the no-name actors strike the right tone for the material, mostly serious but some of them with a wink of hammy-ness.

There are only two disagreeable characters, the goofball who tries too hard to be amusing (because he pathetically needs attention) and the loose Jezebel. We've all met people in real-life just like these two; they're just slightly exaggerated and comical here.

Indie horror or not, the locations are excellent, the drama is consistently entertaining, and the writer/director successfully implements an unexpected twist in the final act. I also like how the lying "Jezebel" (Devon Ogden) and the crude clown (Eli Bildner) are contrasted by the petite Christian lass (Trista Robinson) and the winsome protagonist (Rebecca Summers), not to mention the noble Zac (Donny Boaz). One character rightly observes that the goofball never takes anything serious, but watch his change in demeanor in the second half.

Remember the beginning of "The Edge" (1997), which took place at a beautiful lodge in the western wilderness? Now imagine an entire movie with that setting, albeit on a modest budget featuring a different challenge and with a bit o' humor. That's this film.

Some people don't appreciate micro-budget horror flicks; I do, at least when they deliver the goods.

The movie runs 1 hour, 32 minutes, and was shot at Big Bear Lake, which is about 95 miles east of Los Angeles in the high country; other locations include Angelus Oaks, Trabuco Canyon and Anaheim.

GRADE: B-/C+

I recently watched Silent Retreat (2016) for free on Amazon Prime. The story follows a manager who organizes a cabin retreat in the woods to build rapport among his quirky team. The caretaker is strange, the employees are even stranger, and the manager is hokey and naive (of course). When one employee goes missing during a jog, the group grows suspicious and begins investigating the campground. They uncover that a doctor once conducted bizarre experiments on a boy in that very cabin. Could this be connected to the disappearances?

Directed by Ace Jordan in his debut, the film stars Donny Boaz (The Young and the Restless), Danilo Di Julio (Echoes of Fear), Eli Bildner (The Morning Show), and Devon Ogden (Hollywood Dirt).

The acting and script are unintentionally hilarious-so bad it's entertaining in a "so-bad-it's-not good" way. This feels like a low-budget, made-for-TV horror movie, and not in a good way. I'd rate it 3.5/10 and only recommend it if you're truly out of options.

Hard to find too much merrit about this one, so if you have seen it, you will probably agree and if not, then there are plenty more effective examples, of the 'Young Persons in Perril' genre, you could seek out instead.

SILENT RETREAT is your latest no-budget horror flick with no redeeming values and a lot of bad stuff indeed. It's a poorly-shot, poorly-acted mess, with a predictable storyline that goes nowhere and a general lack of motivation that makes it difficult to sit through. This is amateurish stuff indeed, with a bunch of hateful characters vacationing in a remote cabin for the weekend and finding themselves menaced by a foe. There's no sex or gore to speak of so nothing for the horror or exploitation fan, and indeed 99% of the running time consists of characters just wandering around aimlessly.

What we do get is a whole lot of arguing and insults between the unpleasant cast members. It feels as if the scriptwriters went out of their way to make the characters as unlikeable as possible, and it works; you'll be itching for them to die violently after about five minutes, although sadly it doesn't work out that way. I also have to laugh at the way these cheap US films always seem to have one Brit in the cast whose accent sounds completely unrealistic to this British viewer.

Honestly, I thought this was on the VERGE of being pretty good. Does it have limitations? Sure it does: shoestring budget parlayed into sub-par special effects, unvetted aspiring actors, overly convoluted script, awkward directing in places. All that being said, this movie does one thing which I really really like in horror films, which I seldom see: it throws a stack of characters into a panic scenario where they all separate, are fending for themselves, and slowly one by one they're pulled into the reality of the situation. It's hard to describe exactly the atmosphere I'm talking about here, but basically, a group of people who all get separated, and befall misfortunes one by one. There's a very moody atmosphere to this type of concept which I like a lot. Another film that conveyed this pretty well was "Session 9."

The director had a clear vision of what he was doing, and I think it's unfair to say that he wasn't at least semi successful. For one thing, I thought the mental disorder of the protagonist was very well handled. As someone who's been closely involved with people who suffer from extreme hallucinations, I appreciate how this plot point was worked in to synchronize with the characters around the protagonist. It really annoys me when you have a character who's dealing with this, and it's like they can flip it on and off when it's convenient, and nobody around them notices anything askew.

So, do the films strength's make up for the weaknesses? In my opinion yes. A lot of people seem to think the actors are horrible. Some of the characters come across as a little cliched, but honestly none of them bothered me that much, in terms of acting, speaking only for myself. In the end, I think there's one major point of focus which screws this film up in a bad way. The director leans towards giving it a mystery vibe rather than a thriller vibe, and as such, the plot comes across as convoluted in a way that's disconnected and distracting. The vague "Psycho" reference of the fly shows you sort of where his head was at.

If the director started out by putting everything on the table, and making it a more focused character study like say with Jack Torrence in "The Shinning", I think it would have done leaps and bounds at better selling the premise. The plot points do come across as forced and cliched, largely because the character seems too disconnected from the backstory. It's like a spy movie where the spy saves the day by manually flying a plane, or something of the sport, or just by chance, he knew the main terrorist since childhood, and thus is able to talk him into a resolution. We're supposed to take it for granted, but it comes across as very convenient and inorganic. You'd think the character himself would be a little more aware and calculating, in terms of what was unfolding but no; it comes across as an unfolding mystery to him as well, which doesn't quite fit with what's really motivating him here.

Personally, I'd have liked to see the initial abduction of the crazy religious girl, for example. Didn't really need a whole mystery around it. Just put all the cards on the table and build up that backstory; we already kind of know what's going on anyway. Taking everything into balance, I still thought the film was passable. It does just enough to be credible in its own right. You could definitely do worse, and I think this is not a bad first attempt for a fledging director. All it needed, in a phrase, was tighter execution.