Promenons-nous dans les bois

For the first time, France's broaching a subject which made the reputation and the success of famous movies such as "Scream" or "I know what you did last summer": the serial murder. Here, the serial murder is in keeping with a French nursery rhyme that deals with the big bad wolf. Unfortunately, this movie which is besides Delplanque's first movie is far from being successful. His movie takes back too many elements that became clichés of horror movies like the raven that is synonym of a bad omen, the haunted house and the serie of sinister-looking characters. But above all, the movie doesn't succeed in hiding an obvious lack of inspiration, especially the dialogs that aren't very worked and it doesn't hesitate in borrowing scenes from other movies. I think about "the blair witch project" when one of the actors is disappearing into the woods and about "psycho" with the murder under the shower and moreover Delplanque's making is empty and hollow. Sometimes the movie becomes ridiculous due to a few scenes like the actors' show played in front of Axel de Fersen and Nicolas and a few characters: the cop who turns up at the most awkward moment hasn't got a cop's head and mind. As far as the little boy Nicolas is concerned, he is bad used. During an important part of the movie, he stays still, the vacant look he seems scared by the big bad wolf and he doesn't say a single word. The little actor that epitomizes him hadn't had very much work to do.... Nevertheless Fraçois Berléand is quite convincing in his role of sinister-looking character even if the movie doesn't expand his feelings to Wilfried, one of the young men. I noticed that Berléand seems to feel love to him.... At last, the movie succeeds, sometimes, in creating an ounce of suspense and doubt in the spectator's mind: who is the big bad wolf? Who is responsible of all the murders? You'll know the answers at the end of this listless and dull movie....

This is a pretty odd little French slasher, that is more concerned about creating an artistic and dark atmosphere than telling a story.

You could say that this movie is taking a bit of a more artistic approach to the genre but unfortunately this doesn't exactly make the movie very interesting or exciting to watch. It does a horrible job at building up- and handling its tension and all of its other horror ingredients.

The film-makers had probably seen a couple of slashers but it doesn't feel like they understood the genre as well. They thought that it was enough to just have a dark atmosphere, throughout the entire movie but this dark atmosphere actually starts to work against the movie. All of the killings are way too dark for instance and it makes it hard to tell what is exactly going on at time. The darkness also ensures that the movie feels pretty tame with its gore, though with a bit more light the movie still could had been a gore-fest, since it has some pretty gruesome killings in it actually.

The story in its core is pretty standard but it loves to see itself as something clever and original. Not that the movie feels pretentious but it's just so that the average movie watcher will find very little original and surprises in this movie, no matter how hard the movie tries at times. You also really won't feel involved with the story at all, or with any of the characters that are in it.

Best thing I can say about the movie is that I didn't hated watching it. I therefore am also going to be quite mild with my rating but still it really isn't a movie that is worth checking out.

5/10

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This "film" should be presented at all levels of film courses especially the scripting ones because it has so many flaws in plot and lacks so many parts of a feature film that one can hardly imagine better tool for explaining what should the story for the movie be like.I don't understand that high ranking it got and some comments about other levels of depths of the story made me laughing loud.After first 20 minutes I was angry at myself because I picked the film for my friends but then I was enjoying every illogical turn of the plot, dialogue and acting of characters under given circumstances just for fun.I have no doubt that had Monty Python been still in action they wouldn't let this one pass unnoticed-one of the most absurd charcters was the policeman/detective -when he first appeared on screen -just what was this? At the end one of my friends added "and now there will be a shot on a raven and finish" and after it happened just that we laughed through the credits maybe trying to forget how dull and boring this french "masterpiece" was.

Deep in the Woods (aka:Promenons-nous dans les bois) is a sort of French spin on the glossy post-Scream teen slasher. All the ingredients are present, from the cast of beautiful young men and women, the hip soundtrack, right on down to the film's packaging, which looks straight out of Dimension's art department. However, all similiarities end there. Judging this "book" by it's cover would be a big mistake, because Deep in the Woods is more Argento than Craven, and is one of the finest examples of European horror to make it on to DVD.

The film opens with a long traveling shot of a woman reading "Little Red Riding Hood" to a child, and it's a dazzling introduction, with the camera peering through a keyhole and gliding into the room, leading up a truly unsettling murder. We are then introduced to our lead players, a quintet of actors hired to perform Red Riding Hood for an eccentric millionaire, Axel de Fersen(Berleand), and his autistic grandson, Nicolas ( a spooky kid named Thibault Truffert) . As the title suggests, Axel's home is an isolated castle deep within the woods, and from the moment the group arrives, there is an immediate sense of dread, with Axel displaying a rather nasty temperment,( as well as a bit of "affection" for Wilfried (Lecoeur)), a bizarre "game-keeper" named Stephane (Denis Levant) who hovers over Axel protectively, and, of course, the autistic Nicolas, who manages to be creepy just by sitting there. Meanwhile, the police are in hot pursuit of a serial rapist who has apparently taken up residence in the 10 kilometers of woods surrounding Axel's estate. Before long, we are thrown headlong into a Giallo-like murder-mystery that works quite well until the final act, where the film seems to run out of gas. Still, it's quite a ride while it lasts!

Delplanque's direction is the real star here. The bio on the DVD says he was only 27 years old when he completed Deep in the Woods, and I have to say, I was really impressed, if not downright shocked, by his ability to turn this relatively formulaic tale into a splendidly entertaining visual feast! If this is any indication of what this guy's next project will look like, get me my ticket now! From quick cuts, long shots, ingenious angles and some spectacular point-of-view stuff, the camera becomes as organic as the characters (and in some cases, more so). In the hands of a lesser filmmaker this film could have easily been a kill-by-numbers I Know What You Did Last Summer rehash, but Delplanque's unique visuals keep you glued to the screen until the rather unsatisfying conclusion.

As a whole, I highly recommend Deep in the Woods. It's leagues better than any of it's American counterparts (although so is sleeping or watching paint dry), and is sure to please fans of Argento, Bava, et all. The only complaints I have are the same complaints I always have with Giallo's and that is the cardboard characterizations and lack of logic in the script, although Deep in the Woods is actually pretty consistent in the latter.

As far as extras, there are a bunch, but they aren't all that. There is the whole cast/crew bios section, but, aside from the director, who cares? No one stood out as the next Gerard Depardieu, so I really didn't care what Maud Buquet had on her resume'. There are also two trailers which are virtually identical, save the French trailer shows full frontal nudity and most of the goriest bits, so, while it's great to watch, wait till you've seen the film before watching the naked ladies over and over. There is also a commentary by Brian Yuzna of all people, who is called "Horror Expert" on the liner notes. He reads from notes scribbled by Delplanque, and then throws in his two cents. His commentary is actually pretty cool, because he seems genuinely impressed with the director's work, but it would have been nice to hear from Delplanque himself, even if they had to subtitle his commentary. Rounding out the package are the nice English and French 5.1 audio tracks. Both the video and audio presentation are flawless, but since this is a 2000 release I'd expect no less.

All in all, a decent package of an above average flick by Artisan and a real treat for anyone who has yet to recover from the Dawson's Creek era of the horror genre. Pretty people CAN die in very ugly ways, after all!

Based on the title, DVD-cover image, casting choices and short synopsis, "Deep in the Woods" looks like a dumb and formulaic backwoods slasher/survival horror flick. And for about 50% that is exactly the case, but for the remaining 50% it's a surprisingly stylish, experimental and unsettling Goth-horror tryout. Writer/director Lionel Delplanque does a handful of brilliant things with the cinematography and thought up a few downright and genuinely disturbing aspects (the creepy little kid!), but unfortunately he also wanted to be too "American" when it comes to the rest of the screenplay. The teenage protagonists are utmost annoying stereotypes and they do the stupidest things imaginable, like going into the woods at night after they received specific warning there's a maniac killer on the loose. The deaths/killings are rather mundane and people keep appearing and disappearing without any proper explanation, but that about concludes the bad news. "Deep in the Woods" features a strong opening sequence and the interesting idea to process the Little Red Riding Hood fairy-tale into the script. Five obnoxious wannabe actors are heading out to a mansion the middle of a desolated forest, where they are hired to perform a private theater show to the grandson of an eccentric old man. Upon their arrival, they find out the old man is a crazed wheelchair-bound psycho with oppressed homo-erotic desires, his loyal servant is a perverted taxidermist and the grandson is a silent and autistic but terrifying child with a major trauma. Soon after their (abysmal) live performance on stage, the group find themselves pursued by a lunatic killer in a leather (!) wolf costume. Delplanque manages to insert several suspense-laden moments during the cat & mouse game and the climax, although preposterous and over-the-top, is quite exhilarating. It's very strange that Lionel Delplanque wasn't offered a one-way ticket to Hollywood after this (like his colleagues Alexandre Aja, Xavier Gens and Pascal Laugier), because his competent directing is undoubtedly film's biggest trump. I guess the script was ultimately too weak for him to become noticed.