Timber Falls

OK, this story is not so original. You've seen this too many times. I can name Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Wrong Turn, Misery and… too many to name. The good thing about this movie is that I actually care about the lead characters. It's not like those movies when you say "Kill them all". The violence is well-done and yes, this is not Torture Porn like The Saw and Hostel sequels. The make-up is fantastic and this movie doesn't have those dumb CGI. Great performances by the lead characters and by the killers too. If you want an enjoyable movie with a lot of tension and violence, you should check this out. You won't repent.

Where to begin with "Timber Falls", as I honestly can't decide whether I should be harsh or mild in my user comment? On one hand, it's an admirably tense nowadays horror flick with brutal gore, lovely filming locations and identifiable main characters, but on the other hand it serves cliché after cliché and it's full of predictable twists. I liked the realism of the character drawings and for once the lead protagonists Mike and Sheryl are okay people that you actually wish to survive their ordeal, but fact remains that you've seen this exact same story dozens of times before and I can't filter out any aspect that is unique. Young couple goes hiking in a West Virginian national park (although for budgetary reasons the film is actually shot in Romania) where they ask the wrong persons for directions and end up in the torture dungeon of a deranged hillbilly family with a deformed son. What else can I add that you can't figure out by yourself? That the kidnappers are disturbed religious fanatics? Nope, that's hardly innovative either. That their deformed adolescent son is a perverted rapist with a nasty scythe for a toy? That's also not a big surprise, I guess… And yet, I would still encourage genre admirers to check "Timber Falls" out, because it's a competently made and unhinged horror flick that doesn't feature any boring moments. The performances of Josh Randall and the beautiful Brianna Brown are more than adequate and TV-starlet Beth Broderick ("Lost", "Sabrina Teenage Witch") clearly had a field day depicting the deranged backwoods bitch Ida. Oh, perhaps one thing that features here and you won't find in similar gore flicks: the ending. But I won't ruin it

I reluctantly rented this movie after passing over it repeatedly at my local RedBox. From the DVD cover art and that fact that I've rented quite a few low budget stinkers from RedBox, gave me pause to ponder. I paid my 1.07 and brought it home thinking that I was in for another cheap digital, direct to DVD bomb (see Full Moon's "Petrified" for all time worst movie.) Maybe I'd get a couple of "Plan 9" type laughs out of Timber Falls. Boy, was I wrong!! This movie was tight and scary. Sure I've seen this type of plot line a dozen times or so, but what the hell--I love those predictable zombie movies too and will rent them religiously. Timber Falls was well crafted and moved at a brisk pace. It easily held my attention and I had only paused it for one trip to the bathroom. That says a lot, because when bored, I will usually get up multiple times from my living room couch to meander around the crib. The acting was very good and believable. There were a few scenes that I could've done without, but as a whole, the movie had me jumping up and down and wringing my hands like an old Jewish bubby that just found out her grandson married a shiksa. I highly recommend this movie and give it a huge "welcome to my vault of horror."

For the life of me I cannot understand why Michael (Josh Randall - "Ed") would bother going after Sheryl (Brianna Brown). All she did the first 30 minutes of this movie was whine and complain.

There is nothing new or original here. It's the same story about inbred mountain folk and their bizarre rituals - this time with a really interesting weapon.

You have the usual torture, and a nice decapitation, but it never really gets to the level we are used to. The ending just doesn't make sense, either.

Go watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre again instead.

When a young couple (Josh Randall and Brianna Brown) go hiking in West Virginia, they meet with a local woman named Ida (Beth Broderick) who recommends that they head along the trail to Timber Falls due to the beautiful waterfalls and gorgeous Appalachian views. Despite prior knowledge that the trail is the least frequently patrolled, Mike and Sheryl decide to follow Ida's advice and end up abducted, tortured and fighting for their lives against... oh, that would spoil the fun wouldn't it?

"Timber Falls" borrows a little bit from "Wrong Turn" (in fact, it was mistakenly marketed as "Wrong Turn 2" in Brazil), a little bit from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and a little bit from "Hostel". Unfortunately, it ends up less than the sum of its parts. The best scene in the entire movie comes in the opening segment which features a lot of blood and the rather gruesome way in which a young woman frees herself from imprisonment. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is nowhere near as bloody or horrific. With only one exception that I can think of, the camera subsequently shies away from showing most of what is happening.

The fact that it borrows from other movies isn't what causes "Timber Falls" to fail. The movie fails because the main characters aren't actually that interesting. They spend the first half of the movie making small talk or simply making out with one another, and the second half crying or shouting. You don't get much back-story either, other than some dialogue explaining that one of them is a nurse. Because of this, you can't really connect to either of them and ultimately don't care all that much about their fate.

It's a shame really because you get the feeling that director Tony Giglio has quite a lot of talent. The Romanian landscape (where the movie was actually filmed) is captured beautifully and he fully conveys the gloom of the location in which the two main characters are imprisoned.

As it is, "Timber Falls" isn't a bad movie. It just isn't a particularly great one either. The torture scenes aren't particularly interesting and there's absolutely nothing here that you haven't seen before in other horror movies of this ilk. If you've already watched "The Hills Have Eyes", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Wrong Turn" and all the other scary wilderness/torture-porn movies then this will be an okay rental until something better arrives. If not then try one of the aforementioned movies instead