The Barrens

"The deer, his antlers, it wasn't the fence that tore them off...it was the Leed's Devil...Jersey Devil." Richard (Moyer) is a father who can feel his family slipping away. They don't do anything together anymore so he decides to pack them all up and drive them out to the woods where he went as a kid for a weekend camping trip. When they get there the hear of a missing person. Richard begins to wonder if the stories he heard about the Jersey Devil are true. This is a movie for true horror fans only. The movie is pretty slow and not very original but on the other hand it is a very neat idea. The biggest problem with this is that once again the idea of the movie is better then the movie itself. The idea of the Jersey Devil is something that is made for a horror movie, but to me this one was just to slow and not really scary enough to fully expand on the "legend" of the devil. This movie really just boiled down to a family going crazy in the woods, which has been done over and over. Fans of the "Hunters" or even "Wrong Turn" may like this but to me it was just too slow and un-original to fully enjoy. Overall, another movie that had a really good idea but ended up being a cookie cutter horror movie. I give it a C+.

Before I watch a film, I tend to check IMDb. Sadly,the negatives always prove right. Especially with 'The Barrens'.

This film had a positive review, but I struggle to see why.

OK, I like a good low-budget film (e.g. Carriers), but this was too much. The director did try to create tension - a teenage daughter, protecting a young child, a possibly errant wife, etc., but it all amounted to nothing.

I found myself second-guessing the dialogue, and the story. After an hour of suffering, I gave up.

A nice try, but try harder.

Hoping to reconnect together, an estranged family on a camping trip in the Pine Barrens learn the local legend involving the Jersey Devil is real when the voracious creature appears and forces the family to deal with it to escape the woods.

This here is one of the more frustrating and problematic creature features around as there was a chance to do something special here. The setting here is a dark, creepy forest ripe with really terrifying layouts that are perfect for unleashing a voracious creature, it's quite a decent-looking creature with quite a chilling back-story to begin with, and there's some fun to be had when it gets the family lost in the back-part of the woods along the later half, but instead this one tends to involve a slew of increasingly bizarre and outright unnecessary subplots that make this one seem to go on forever. Adding in the usual family drama is more than enough and never really adds much new material to be influenced by this tactic, which feels like a continuation of the clichés anyway, yet the fact that there's so much extra happening going on here that the beginning to this one is so hard to get into it seems to go on forever dealing with the family issues, teen angst, the dead dog and the quest for closure about his father just makes for a tough time overall. All these subplots simply cause the actual attacks to get pushed back so much that the fun attacks in that second half come so late their inclusion is almost an afterthought and a case for being too little, too late to save this one from the potential it could've had about chasing down the revelers in the forest and them getting caught in the middle the way this starts off as, but even without this plot the beast itself and the action in the final half when he's mad and delirious do make this one somewhat interesting and save it somewhat.

Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and children-in-jeopardy.

Darren Lynn Bousman directed some of the more watchable Saw sequels and the cult, horror sci-fi rock opera Repo! The Genetic Opera. Since then, his movies just get worse and worse. After his barely okay Mother's Day, I didn't have high hopes for this movie but it still managed to disappoint me.

True Blood actor Stephen Moyer stars as an upper middle class family man that drags his wife, teenage daughter, and pre-adolescent son out camping to the same place he used to go with his father. Once they arrive at a heavily populated camp site, he immediately begins acting crazier and crazier but this doesn't seem to concern his family, who agree to follow him even deeper into the woods. Along the way, he is haunted by visions of local legend the Jersey Devil, a man eating demon spawn that supposedly stalks the woods.

Not much of The Barrens makes sense and Stephen Moyer's performance is just terrible. He plays the whole film in the same note of crazed, squinting intensity. He rants, pops pills, shoves his kids, and throws jealous temper tantrums at his wife so frequently that he makes Jack Nicholson in The Shining seem balanced. It's completely unbelievable that his family wouldn't be more concerned by his insanity.

Mia Kirshner of The Black Dahlia and The L Word and the rest of his family are better, but they're not given enough personality to impress. Erik Knudson, of Scream 4, Saw 2, and Jericho is also great is a supporting role as a skate punk the daughter befriends and he steals every scene he's in but he doesn't have much screen time.

Aside from a cool looking creature, which may or may not only exist in the father's imagination, there's not much to The Barrens and it just limps along like a wounded hiker for the first hour. Things pick up in the last 30 minutes but it's too little too late and down ending seems forced and, like the rest of the movie, has some major logic issues. I just really can't recommend this movie to anyone.

First off, this is NOT just a horror film but more of a Hitchcock type suspense film. It's based on the Jersey Devil Legend and involves a troubled man who takes his family on a remote camping trip into the jersey pine barrens in which he begins to believe they're being hunted by The Jersey Devil. Now his own sanity is being questioned not by just himself but by his family as well. Is it the real Jersey Devil or the delusions of a psychopath? The climax is not a certain one as it isn't with most horror type films but this wasn't just a horror film as the director uses suspense more as a tool rather than a plug. As a fan of True Blood, I think this is Stephen Moyer's best performance outside of Bill Compton, and Mia Kirshner who I love in just about anything, always delivers. I saw this in a theater and I did "jump" on a few parts as did others. The director, Darren Lynn Bousman, (SAW II-IV Franchise) who Godfathered "Repo: The Genetic Opera" and my much-anticipated must-see "The Devil's Carnival", brought to life a story that will leave you questioning...does the Jersey Devil exist? Watch it and see...(btw, I'm never going camping again)