Skull Forest

I don't know where to begin with Skull Forest. It's a very bad film and looks as if it was made by a bunch of friends who got together and decided to make a movie over the course of a weekend--then post it on YouTube. The camera-work appears to have been done with an iPad or home video camera. Or, if better equipment was used, it was used very badly. I have never seen a film with so many shots that were out of frame, MANY were diagonal, some had heads clipped off the actors and there were entirely too many close-ups—yet these somehow made it past the editing stage! It looks no better than what you or I would do myself...provided we were intoxicated or legally blind. While it did get a little better as the film progressed (mostly, I assumed because whoever was using the camera learned by doing), the beginning especially made me a bit motion sick watching it and folks often looked like they were walking uphill all the time! After reviewing more than 16000 films on IMDb, I can honestly say that this film has the worst camera work of any of the pictures I've reviewed. It's a shame, because the film wasn't 100% terrible—but the camera was so bad I could see most folks giving up on it very quickly.

The film is a reworking of the classic story The Most Dangerous Game. It was a dandy B-movie from 1932 that starred Joel McCrea and Fay Wray and it was remade many times in both films and on television. Fortunately, the filmmakers DID credit this at the beginning and I appreciated this. The major difference is that instead of one hunter hunting a couple, this film has a group of women out in the woods for a girls weekend—and they walk into the middle of a bunch of psychos playing paintball—but with real weapons!!! That will sure screw up your weekend! There really isn't a lot of plot beyond that—just contestants in some weirdo ultimate sport killing off early middle-aged women…or, in a few cases, getting killed.

So what was good about this film? Well, it wasn't the acting--that was uneven. While some was decent, some actors couldn't really deliver their lines and the director SHOULD have re-shot these scenes. One guy, however, did some really nice martial arts-style stunts near the end. Oddly, the best thing about this film is something which I think is used way too much in movies—the nudity. This is a super-explicit film with lots of nudity—lots. What I appreciated, though, is that these naked looked NORMAL. They were not stick-thin actresses and they looked their age—and didn't seem hung up on showing their bodies. Considering the message we get from films is impossible to meet in real life (no, guys, women do NOT all look like airbrushed Playboy models), it's nice to see a film with normal looking women. However, I am also sure a lot of women would be offended, as the only nekkid folks in the film were women! Plus, if this and a few stunts are the best things I can say about Skull Forest, it really is a terrible film! Don't say I didn't warn you.

Stars: Lisa Neeld( Playboy), Sara Brooks (WWE) and Pamela Sutch ( B-movie Scream Icon).

In a Len Kabasinski film.

So, There is bidding for an opportunity to hunt down HUMANS, Evidently this is a regular event….Sheesh ! Was intrigued that some of the 'Bad Guy Hunters ' were also women hunting other women,What does that tell us…Kind of deep thoughts for a B-Movie …Right ? The female leads are pretty impressive,Yes,PRETTY ,I mean we get to see a lot of them physically displayed and yet they can hang with the boys in the violence department.

The stunts,gore scenes and sheer terror developed in the script was great.

No pun intended - when you (read me) go down a rabbiot hole, you go down all the way (again no pun intended). Seeing one movie on tubi leads you to suggestions for other movies that are similar. And when you get hoodwinked like me ... actually I reckon it is my own fault for falling for posters like that.

Anyway, there are some female friends and they go into the woods. Yeah I know - but they are not aware this is a horror movie. So that decision aside - there are way more not intelligent things they do. Acting is not really a priority here ... doesn't matter though .. you're either down with this or you are not.

Looking for a weekend away, a group of girlfriends deciding to take a relaxing girls' weekend in the woods finds themselves targeted and hunted by a strange group of hunters looking to savagely hunt and kill women for sport and must find a way to get away from the group alive.

Overall, this was a fairly enjoyable genre effort. Among the more enjoyable features here is the fun setup to everything which is incredibly cliched but still effective enough. The early scenes offer enough of a background on their individual backgrounds as a need for the trip to be organized as well as their initial encounters around the woods having fun before the group comes under attack by the stranger that starts them in on the early encounters with the hunters. These offer up some intriguing aspects here with the relative confusion of everything that's going on around here. That allows the film to come off quite nicely with the brutal hunting scenes that take place. The use of the backwoods brutality style hunting and killing that takes place is quite fun here with this one starting off nicely when they interrupt the vacation with the brutalized captive and the subsequent hunt through the woods trying to capture them with plenty of knives and gun-play mixed with some hand-to-hand brawling is all rather fun. With some intriguing twists involving shocking survivals, brutal brawling throughout the woods, and some surprising death orders, it comes off nicely giving this some good aspects to it. There are some issues here that bring this one down. One of the main factors bringing this one down is the series of incredibly underwhelming tough-guy interactions with the hunters that doesn't establish who they are all that well. Immediately introducing them by arguing and snapping at each other despite supposedly having done this before makes them feel childish and intends to create false drama where there really shouldn't be in this situation when everyone should be on the same page to show how much of a threat they should be so it all winds up feeling massively cliched and unrealistic. The other real drawback to this one is the seemingly random bits of information we get on the hunting club that's chasing them that makes any sense. The initial introduction shows it to be a high-class group of wealthy figures looking to do this for sport and fun, yet the low-rent group out in the woods is nowhere close to that kind of clientele which makes it seem weird that was the type of setup they showed themselves to be. Their influence is once again a wealth-based series of donations keeping everyone on their payroll to avoid suspicion, so its inconsistency is an issue and holds this one down overall.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Full Nudity, and Graphic Language.

In the intro some guy in the forest is suddenly shot. Then we meet four female friends among them a cop and a busy business lady who go on a hiking trip in the woods. Next we meet a group of rich arrogant people at some fancy induction ceremony were new members are introduced. We hear something about their professional backgrounds and their extracurricular activities which involve hunting.

The trip is going fine for the ladies until some French-speaking guy with a gun shows up. The lady cop neutralizes him and handcuffs him to a tree. Suddenly a shot is fired from somewhere and the guy is hit in the head. Of course there's no cell phone reception anywhere. The girls separate into two groups of two. They don't know what is going until more bullets start flying in their direction and they start running into hunters. Hunters from the rich peoples club who are hunting them! Two of the girls run into a cop who takes them to a cabin. Later two hunters end up there as well and there's a surprise. The cop lady does her best to save herself and her friend as bullets and arrows start flying and they even have to face mines. Later we get another surprise as one of the girls starts taking matters into her own hands and goes after the hunters. The hunters, which include women, let competition take the best of them and they start beating each other up. The question is who will survive at the end.

Skull Forrest is competently made very low budget horror movie. Everybody seems to be doing the best with little resources. Acting varies across the board from good to terrible. The movie looks fairly good and the events thankfully takes place almost entirely during the day. The director is resourceful and makes things look better than they are. Aside from the problems resulting of necessity there are problems of choice which are odd and a bit annoying. A lot, too much, is filmed with the camera at a 45 degree angle, so the image and the actors are diagonal on your screen. Movies often overdo the closeup of faces, and this one is no exception, but it goes beyond that by giving us closeups of nearly everything. The director also does his best to avoid giving us dialog. When a revelation is to be made, he cuts to something else leaving us guessing as to what was said or wasn't said. Ordinarily low budget movies stay away from action or effects by giving us characters and dialog. Skull Forest insists on action and effects and avoids story for some reason. There is some fairly well done gore and some nudity as well which does make this movie stand out among low budget flicks. In general for a movie with little to no budget Skull Forest represents a strong effort by the cast and crew.