Devil's Trail

No spoilers

Compared to other recent found footages which as horror fans we know they've been shit, this started off somewhat interesting and had some jokes in it but the ending sucks. Better than most low budget horrors these days but certainly won't be missing much by not watching this also. At least the director can gain experience from this film and make better ones in the future, already seems to be better than most small time horror directors.

Bad, bad, BAD! Look, I don't need blood, and gore, I also don't mind slow horror. However, this film is beyond bad. I'll tell you now, absolutely NOTHING happens. Two guys get semi lost in the woods, the acting is pretty low quality. Oh, and the monster(s)? Yeah, ALL you see is red eyes. That's it. Yep, red eyes once or twice...and two guys lost in the woods. The acting gets noticbly bad once they start to argue and fight.

I'm the type that sees a 4/10 on IMDb it it's horror and think typically isn't bad at all...I think maybe of the 4-5 star films on IMDb should be like 6/7+! This however?? 4.1!? I would give it a -1 if I could. So why did I give it a 2? Well, the camera/film/budget look was DECENT quality...better than some low budget. That is the ONLY positive thing about this film. Please don't waste your time!

The entire time I was watching this found footage-style film I was struck by it being pretty much like The Blair Witch Project, but better in many respects. For example, you shouldn't get motion sickness from watching this. There are some big differences, though. At one point the two hikers (played by the director and a regular in some of his films), making a documentary about wilderness survival for a TV series, stumble upon three witches (or modern practitioners of a Wicca-like religion) performing a ceremony in the woods. These woman are all regulars in the other films by this production company. And they are all skyclad. Some have said this is gratuitous, but with the premise of real life witches as a religious belief, it's actually pretty authentic. They all have different personalities and take a little time to develop them. Then, later, we see that this was not just a random encounter. With symbols found in the woods and mysterious unseen visitors, this is all tied in to what's going on. Whereas the ending of The Blair Witch project is its only slightly redeeming value, the ending of this movie unfortunately doesn't meet that standard, in my opinion. I can't really get more into it than that without giving spoilers, but let's just say that it was a missed opportunity. Still, I appreciate what they were trying to do with this film, and they didn't scam a bunch of impressionable kids into thinking it was real and screw the actors over, like those other guys did.

DEVIL's TRAIL tackles the lore of the Jersey Devil, a cryptid in the Pine Barrens of South Jersey, said to be a biped with hooves and wings and a mythology going back to the 1700s. Two survival show streamers go there to search for it within the framework of a 21-day survival challenge. Early on, they encounter a coven of witches and from then on their endeavor seems to be jinxed.

Other than the cryptid in question, this movie offers little that hasn't been in done countless other found footage movies before.

On the positive side, the Dallas character did do a fairly good job of portraying an awkward introvert who almost cracks under pressure. Also, there was some interesting information about outdoor survival (for example, prior to this movie, I had never heard of a Steripen), even though these two seem to still have done many survivalist faux pas that even I can recognize e.g. Not bringing gloves, maps or lighters.

The ending, which presents two twists back-to-back, is especially poorly executed. The first twist did not give enough information about exactly what was fake and what was real, and the second twist shows a horror scene exactly in the same style of the horror scene before the first twist. This seems like an amateur error in film-making: if you want to convince the audience that things are different now, show them differently!

So, I learned about the Jersey Devil and some basic aspects of survivalism (and that is why I did not rate the film lower), but everything else about this film is forgettable.

Nothing happens in this movie. Nothing. Some witches, and that plotline went nowhere. A red-eyed beast, whose eyes are all you ever see, and two "survival" guys who fight the entire time. Things change up in the final five minutes of this monstrosity. Seriously. I think the movie was written around those final five minutes. Not worth your time. It certainly wasn't worth mine.