Wild Country

I really enjoyed this. Thought the actors were very naturalistic and pulled off their roles very well. This meant I stuck with the film to the end because I wanted to know the outcome. There were bad points - SFX should have been concealed by the dark more and it was too formulaic. Bold effort though and I expected to see a higher average, but there is some cheapness to be looked through. But in its own right, I was happy to watch and didn't find any slack. The actual horror was low because of this, but the tension was there. I've scored it high because I enjoyed it and wanted to see the end, whereas many glossier films I find myself just hoping that they will end.

An attempt at what? I have no idea, but there's potential here. It's squandered pretty badly on a weak script and a terribly-realised monster.

The story itself has a lot of potential - a young (teen?) mother who gives up her baby for adoption later goes on a camping trip with friends and a preacher, and finds an abandoned baby. The friends are then all terrorised by a bear monster thing, kind of like the bear from Annihilation if it was imagined by early Doctor Who creature designers. A fitting comparison, really, considering the preacher is played by Peter Capaldi - the 12th actor to portray The Doctor.

The kids do an admirable job, really, and deliver their dialogue pretty well, and Capaldi is...watchable? I guess? I mean, he barely has any screen time, really, so it's hard to say...

The real 'star', though, is the monster...which is really badly realised. If they'd put in more effort with that, it probably would have elevated this movie by quite a bit.

I am slightly biased in favour of this film, since part of it was shot at my farm. Having seen "Wild Country" from its very rough stage through to the final screening, I am very impressed, especially with the special effects, which were extremely well done, and with the quality portrayals by Martin Compston, Samantha Shields, Peter Capaldi and Karen Fraser. Even knowing the plot, I still held my breath at some scenes. The young actors put on very polished performances and Craig Strachan was a considerate but professional producer for such a cast. Scottish films are few and far between and this is a must see for Scots horror fans.

We hear constantly that the British film industry is in crisis. Directors, producers and screenwriters, we are told, need to fight tooth and nail to get their projects on the big screen. We must, therefore, make every effort to support the domestic industry.

Watching Craig Strachan's bog-awful 'Wild Country' isn't just enough to make you lose faith in the judgement of British producers in allowing it to be made, it's likely to sap you of the will to live.

It truly is dire. The performances are wooden, the 'scary monsters' (allegedly werewolves, but more akin to giant moles wearing giant plastic Hallowe'en masks) feeble and unfrightening, the script tired, formulaic and hysterical in every way but the right one (it's not even preposterously histrionic enough to amuse, it's just a bad bad movie), the characters (if the term could be applied loosely enough to describe them) bland to the point of indistinguishability. Even the normally watchable Peter Capaldi is fairly awful.

I challenge anyone watching this rustic ruminance not to laugh out loud at the supposedly terrifying final 'shock'.

Awful. Unremittingly, irredeemably awful.

It could, of course, be a sophisticated ploy to encourage the Chav population to venture into the wild woods and be slaughtered, thus reducing the surplus delinquent population. That, I fear, credits those responsible with far too much subtlety.

As werewolf movies go, this makes 'Cursed' look like Shakespeare.

In Glasgow, the teenager single mother Kelly Ann (Samantha Shields) is forced by Father Steven "Steve" Gillis (Peter Capaldi) to deliver her baby boy for adoption. Six weeks later, Father Steve organizes a hike in the countryside with the youths David (Kevin Quinn), Louise (Nicola Muldoon), Mark (Jamie Quinn) and Kelly Ann and leaves them alone in the Scottish Highlands. He shows the meeting point in the map and tells that he would wait for them in an inn on the next day. Out of the blue, Kelly Ann's ex-boyfriend Lee (Martin Compston) joins the group invited by David. While hiking, the group stumbles with a weird shepherd (Alan McHugh) and later Lee puts the man on the run. During the night, Kelly Ann overhears the cry of a baby and she goes with Lee to a derelict old castle where they find an abandoned baby in the middle of dead bodies. Soon the group is hunted down by a deadly wolf-like creature and has to decide whether they hide or fight to survive.

"Wild Country" is a reasonable slow-paced horror movie with an awful and senseless plot point in the very end. The acting is decent and the Brazilian DVD has subtitles; otherwise it would be very difficult to understand many dialogs. The beast is not a werewolf and is not developed; therefore the viewer never knows what the beast is. Further, how a creature kills so many people without any investigation from the local authorities. The special effects and the cinematography are very poor. As usual in slash movies, there are stupid attitudes: Lee leaves the safety of the tree to be murdered by the creature and the farmer on the motorized tricycle does not listen to Kelly Ann and decides to check what is happening. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Campo Selvagem" ("Wild Country")