Beyond the Woods

A group of friends & family gather at a remote holiday home in rural Ireland, but they're off-put by the sulfuric stench of a newly opened sinkhole a couple of miles away. The stench will be the least of their cares when a bit o' hell breaks loose.

"Beyond the Woods" (2018) is an Irish horror Indie that's mostly mundane drama at the holiday home where the dudes & dudettes hang around drinking & smoking or maybe walking the yard/woods. If you can handle that, things turn horrific in the last act with pretty good infernal f/x, especially for a spare-change Indie. Personally, I enjoyed the lens into everyday social life in Ireland, but others may understandably find it tedious.

The film runs 1 hour, 23 minutes, and was shot in Cullen (the holiday home & surrounding woods) & Crosshaven (creature nightmare scene), County Cork, Ireland.

GRADE: C

Actually good relationship and friendship unraveling drama disguised as a horror movie. Definitely not something you'd want to watch for a cheap scare.

The best part of the movie is the acting...I think that's what held the movie together...locales- simply beautiful...direction - not bad, but he didn't know how to end...all horror aspects are cliches, but as I said, the actors keep you engaged.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed most of this movie. Good character development and chemistry between the actors; with the acting being rather impressive, and likely best thing going for Beyond the Woods.

If this film were just a straight up drama about some old friends dealing with becoming different people in the interim time from when they last got together until this trip, it would have been rock solid. Even some of the creepiness was at first very well conceived, and could be explained away in the story by the drug/alcohol use and human anxieties they cycle through during their time secluded in the wilderness. It really would have been just fine if left at that. Unfortunately, it was originally developed as a horror flick and so the filmmaker ruined a 7 star indie drama by eventually forcing it into becoming a cliched supernatural slasher. I feel like that's a pretty big shame because the final twenty minutes was just super cheesy and so jarring when compared to the bulk of the story. Things just escalated too fast and it felt out of place. 5/10

I was actually pretty impressed with this film. I was expecting more of a floppy script and cheesy acting but they had a good bunch of actors and the film had everything you would want in a drama, horror film. A top quality movie to watch on the weekend.