Candlewood

A movie about New Milford CT where a bunch of my friends and family live is enough to make me watch a horror movie. Make it about the urban legends surrounding Candlewood Lake and I'm more interested.

Sadly this movie decided to mix those legends with their own fictional tale that is insulting to New Milford and its residents and just plain awful. The plot is meant to have a shocking twist at the end but anyone with a brain will figure it out 10 minutes into the movie and be left with bad pacing that feels like a lifetime to get to that turn.

The acting is terrible so I couldn't tell if it was the actors or the script. Likely both. The opening scene is the only really graphic scene in the movie and it didn't need to be. It's also loaded with jump scares cause everyone thinks that's what makes a horror film. Give me a break.

I wouldn't reccomend this movie to anyone especially if you are familiar with New Milford or Candlewood lake.

It's funny that the real stories of the lake are enough to make a really good movie and yet they chose to ignore all of that and make this tripe. I'm not even giving this a 0 cause that's too high for this. It may be the worst movie I've ever seen.

I had high hopes for this movie. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed. I heard about the film years ago and was looking forward to it. Being from Connecticut, I had been to the lake many times. There are a lot of interesting stories about the lake. It is a 17 mile, man-made lake and there are a ton a creepy stories about it that we all used to tell each other as kids. All of them more interesting than the story in this movie. Very pedestrian directing effort and not a very entertaining script. All these high ratings must be from people involved with the movie or friends of the filmmakers. Not a good movie at all.

This movie was terrible from start to finish. The acting was really bad and the dialogue was unrealistic. I say this because the step daughter and mother clearly hate eachother, but the kind of dialogue they have back and fourth would never fly in real life. And some of the actions/behaviours. The characters(specifically the parents) are excruciatingly unlikeable. As the movie goes on you don't grow to like them at all, in fact you hate them even more. The father's acting is perhaps the worst in the movie and he is just a complete jerk in every way. The wife is the most unlikeable as her character is an overall awful person. Her hateful/angry/jealous demeanour makes the movie intolerable. I've never seen a movie with characters just hating eachother and not grabbing the hearts of anyone.

I was willing to give this a shot because it sounded interesting enough and New England does inspire some of the best horror.

However, the stereotypes start at the beginning and add up fast. Yuppy family moves to "the country". (Seriously, this is not the country. You can find this neighborhood in Google Maps. It's a fancy suburb.) There's a weird property manager and a slutty neighbor girl and a paranoid wife and on and on. I don't really know what happens because I bailed on it about a third of the way through.

First of all Lovers Leap is actually above a river, a few miles from the lake.

I think the movie is an insult to the real New Milford. Many of their residents are NYC transplants.

My father came up from Brooklyn, building our house on Candlewood. Stories, legends are actually few. When a person claims a legend, it's generally confined to a story their grandpa made up during a summer barbecue and nobody else within 10,000 miles has heard of it.

So this movie was a stretch for me, but the moviemaker's effort to lay down the plot line, stoke curiosity, or build suspense is truly lacking.

There actually have been a fair amount of drownings by the dam in New Milford, and there are occasions the victims have not been found. I'd never get out of my boat up near the Rocky River pumping area. To be fair, many of the drownings are sadly Hispanic immigrants who are reading the signs and not not strong swimmers to begin with.

There was a man murdered in what we called Calm Cove in the late 1970s , so there is a little bit of true material.

I'm happy to see a Connecticut movie effort, but the only people giving this an 8, 9, or 10, are relatives of the actors or director in my opinion.

Almost all characters are unlikable. And the family dynamic was barely explained and makes no sense, detracting from any sense of plot. Liking the characters and wanting them to be safe is a hallmark or horror films - add in a bad guy or girl who we want to get their due is nice to, but don't kill kids in your movie.