Don't Go in the Woods

Obviously inspired by slasher classics like Friday the 13th, this low-budget slasher flick has a murderous mountain man hunting down a bevy of hikers and campers in the Utah woods and mountains. No scares per se, but some pretty decent killings including one comic relief beheading of a man in a wheelchair (reminiscent of the wheelchair guy in Texas Chainsaw Massacre). The mountain man does not appear on camera until the second half, which is a good thing as he does not exactly inspire much fear. Good POV shots as he stumbles through the woods and decent camera work throughout keep the thing afloat. I do believe this has put more than one young person off of camping, much the way Jaws gave my sister in law the creeps every time she got into the shower. Mostly amateur actors and a lousy music score cost it one point in my book.

This movie is completely inept, but I love it. I think it's hilariously bad. I usually don't post positive reviews, preferring to use IMDB as a grouchy outlet for complaints. But I want to show my support for this movie.

When DGITW attained "bottom 100" status, I was happy for it. It had finally been accepted by its peers!

As you may have read, a maniac is killing anonymous campers in the woods- hence the cautionary title of the movie. Most of the acting is horrid, usually providing chuckles. The music alters between generic upbeat country guitar and cheap early-eighties casio keyboard. And the gore looks fake, but that's really the least humorous aspect of the movie. The acting and bad script are what really makes DGITW special. I have seen many bad horror flicks, and DGITW easily makes my top five so-bad-it's-good list.

If you're looking for a more detailed description, there are several reviews floating around the web. Check 'em out.

Watching it the first time I was a little disappointed, but I fully appreciated this movie on the second viewing. If you like bad movies, I highly recommend this one.

A bunch of campers, lovemakers, skate bunnies, artists, cops, and sightseers are brutally murdered by a

To say Don't Go in the Woods is episodic would be the understatement of the century. There's not a realistic dialogue exchange or a character arc to be found in these treacherous woods. Acting and writing are the kind of amateurish where you really convince yourself that these people have been kept in an attic for their entire lives without human contact and have never had a normal interaction with another human being. There's no other explanation for how bizarre this movie is. Everything is so disjointed like it was made up on the spot or like these were all a bunch of different short films that were edited together to make a feature. That said, it's one of the most hilarious movies I've ever seen in my life and I think I'll probably watch it 500 more times before I die.

An awful film by every standard known to man, but there's an endearing quality about it that makes it compulsively watchable. From the random roller skater to the idiotic cops to the grotesquely unattractive couple in the van to the brain dead leads who act like they just woke up from a really long nap, Don't Go in the Woods has something for everyone. It's gory, too, even if it's in a "throw a bucket of fake blood on the actors and see what sticks" variety.

There isn't that much to say about "Don't Go in the Woods". It is basically the most uninspired slasher film I've seen, and that's saying something from a guy who has seen every sequel, prequel, remake, and knock-off, and who in particular loves early 80's slasher gold. This is fool's gold. So what makes this movie worse than flicks like "Madman", "The Burning", "Prom Night", "The Prowler", and "Graduation Day"?

For starters, "Don't Go in the Woods" has absolutely no originality to it. The movie is basically a complete knock-off of the previous year's "Just Before Dawn", only "Woods" has more characters and deaths but lacks the atmosphere, suspense, and twist of "Dawn". This film is absolutely amateur in its making. It has a great atmosphere to use and doesn't use it. It doesn't allow any room for character development. Rather than creating suspense it jumps right to the kill. There is simply no use of artistic film-making or creativity in this entire flick.

Earlier in the week I finally was able to see another infamous B-movie slasher, "Graduation Day", which I thought was missing something. Compared to "Woods", "Graduation Day" looks like a masterpiece. "Graduation Day", along with "Friday the 13th", "The Burning", "Madman", "The Prowler", "Happy Birthday to Me", "Prom Night", "Halloween", "A Nightmare on Elm Street", "House on Sorority Row", "Just Before Dawn", "My Bloody Valentine", and others may follow a simple formula but it knows how to make that formula entertaining. Those movies have a rhythm. "Don't Go in the Woods" has no rhythm, but seems more like a bunch of footage of random, annoying people we don't care about or like getting killed in uneventful ways.

Watching this movie felt like it was taking hours, even though it was only 85 minutes. So why would I continue watching "Don't Go in the Woods"? It is a movie from a time period that will never return. Movies like "Woods" will never be released again. This is a grindhouse picture - a low-budget, cheesy movie that played in limited cinemas and never went mainstream. It has earned a large cult fanbase over the past thirty years, and the title has become infamously famous for being a bad movie. For a horror fan, "Woods" is a sort of time capsule, a look back in time to when anyone could make a slasher movie as long as you had a camera. This time has come and gone, and has been forgotten about. For over twenty years, no one thought about "Woods", but the internet and DVD sales have helped bring it back.

The cult horror film "Don't Go in the Woods" is only a popular movie because it is so bad and at one point so unpopular. As a slasher film fan, I am glad to have seen it. The acting is atrocious, the writing is wretched, the effects and laughable, and the plot is absent. But with a few cool shots of the scenery, "Don't Go in the Woods" somehow can keep the audience's minds off its lack of substance. And does this movie really need any substance? That's a debatable question.

Definitely only a movie for hardcore slasher fans. Regular genre fans will most probably get bored and turn it off, and if you don't like horror movies or bad b-movies than steer clear and don't enter "the Woods".