In the Woods

...and not in a good way either. What starts out as a promising title and idea for a film - a couple of guys go "in the woods" on a hunting trip and discover a grave of a horned creature - progresses rather badly.

The acting is very subpar to begin with, and the production values are worse that what it tries to imitate - the Blair Witch project. Now, when a film tries to be cutting-edge with a documentary style approach like Blair Witch attempted, it can meet with some success.

This film is a rather cheesy attempt to feed off some of the success of the Blair Witch.

It's not scary, and not worthy of even a first viewing - I can't believe I've wasted my time watching it in it's entirety, but I had to see if it could redeem itself somehow. Alas, it could not. The characterizations, the creature makeup, and the plot are all some of the worst I have seen - almost laughable...but it tries to be a serious scary movie and fails badly.

Now some "scary" movies are actually funny, and I like those, but this was just horribly made on so many levels. To give you an example, the two guys come upon the creature grave, decide to dig it up, then see the horned skull, get scared and begin to run away... but then (this is sooooo bad), smoke starts to pour out from the skull - bright BLUE smoke like some one had put a colored smoke bomb under it (hey, that's probably how they did the effect). That's when I began to know how "horrible" this flick would be.

I can only give one star for the attempt to make a scary movie about what can happen "in the woods" as it was all a dismal disappointment. Heck, even I could have made this a scarier movie, based upon my real camping experiences.

The movie's motto "Vengence is Eternal" is true if only the director is forced to watch this movie eternally.

There was only one line in this film that was conveyed convincingly. See if YOU can find it. (Hint: it has 'bulls***' in it.)

It was a bad sign that I put this movie in my VCR and discovered that the previous renter did not bother to 'be kind and rewind'. In fact, it appears that they may have gotten about 20 minutes into the film and hit EJECT.

Yes, the acting reeks. I ended up not liking any of the characters and even hoped that the creature would 'get' the wife....or anyone, for that matter. Horrible acting a la Mark Spitz. To go along with that acting is dialog that will have your eyebrows raising. Some very insipid lines delivered by some really bad actors. Yes, but I knew this before I put it in. I WANTED to watch a bad movie.

For the most part the plot and action are straight out of the 1950's monster movie period. However, much of what goes on frequently makes less sense than many films from that period. Unbelievable logical lapses. There are holes in the script you could drive a >put your word here< through.

Unexplainable gore and body parts....at first. But stay with it til the end.

The best technical part of the film was the camera work and direction. Very professional tracking and blocking. It seemed completely out of place it was so good.

You may think by the sound of this that I hated the film. I really didn't. I knew it was going to be bad before I started it. I can handle it. I sat through 'Eegah' twice, after all.

When you finally get to the end and find out what is really going on then the film becomes interesting. Too bad though. End of film. I was hoping that it would play it out a bit more. A neat little idea that would have actually made a decent sequel. Sequel? Unlikely.

This was not a good movie. But it wasn't the worst. I wouldn't recommend it and I won't see it again. But the neat little twist at the end had me thinking about it for awhile. Not an entire loss.

Let me start by saying I love horror movies and independent films. I enjoy bad horror movies, because they are often funny. But this movie has no redeeming qualities, other than the fact that any other movie I ever see will be better than "In the Woods." This movie is more like a soap opera than a horror film, with characters that are even more one-dimensional than in day-time soaps. The whole idea of how the monster (which looks like someone spent about 5 minutes making) came to be is totally ridiculous. The acting is terrible (and I'm not talking B-movie bad, but more like cue-card reading bad). No one in the movie ever even seems scared. This movie is so boring, pooly made, and most of all, POORLY WRITTEN, that I wish I could get my rental fee and 90 minutes of my life back. This script should never have been written, no less developed into a feature-length movie. I can't believe that anyone could have accidentally made such a bad movie. More unbelievable is that someone actually released this on video and DVD. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME WATCHING THIS PIECE OF GARBAGE. This is not the good type of bad horror movie. This is just a very, very, very bad movie.

This movie's plotting, pacing, dialog, action, and acting were so bizarrely strange, i don't know what to think. Any dialog snippet from any 5 minute segment has its own howlers. To with: "I'm gonna take leave of the fire station. And I can come help you at the pet store. and you can show me the difference between the gerbils and hamsters". Woah!

The cop had the best line "I'll tell ya what we got- s**t is what we got". This could be a cult film. You just cannot watch this sober. You need as many friends along to cheer the action along. I thought the cinematography was decent, with the traveling shots. Production design was less than inspired. The dialog was so inept it hurt. The sound mixing was okay, though it felt like everything was ADR'd and foleyed. This film CANNOT be compared to Blair Witch. BWP was much better done, and was a completely different kind of movie. Very little of this film took place in the woods. Maybe 'In the Woods' was a reference to the style of acting (wooden). Something i noticed with the short running time is that certain shots and scenes held out a little longer than needed. I'm wondering if that was to pad out the run time. If so, it hurt the pacing of the film. See at your peril. You have been warned.

I'm all for a good B horror film, but this was the most horribly done, worst acted, most retardedly written thing I have ever seen. The sets were laughable. The gore was stupid. I kept wondering when it would be over. I have an unfortunate need to always watch the whole movie, no matter how bad, just to give it a chance to get better. This one never did.

June 2008 ~ After reading some of the positive reviews, I reevaluated my opinion. With every film I watch, I try to find something positive. I am an artist myself and I know that a lot of effort and love goes into any production of art. I try to see it from the writer's, director's, even the editor's point of view. I try. Really, I do.

But, unfortunately, I have to stand by my original review. Sorry guys.