The Woods Are Real

I was really enjoying it up until they ran out of the house, including the very obvious religious metaphors which usually make many movies with religious undertones unwatchable for myself much sooner, but then it just completely lost any sort of direction. It's a pity because I found it nicely filmed and the acting was above average for most of the cast. The dialogue went from bad to worse to absolutely ludicrous. Skipped through the last 20 minutes because I couldn't be bothered to follow increasingly nonsensical things the characters were saying. I don't usually give movies a 1 star if the cinematography does it for me, or especially when I started off enjoying the first 10 minutes. That's just how bad it got though.

1 star final verdict.

This may be a finalist for worst movie of all time. Now, there are two kinds of bad movies: so bad they're good and so bad they're unwatchable. This is firmly in the latter camp. Two of the most fraudulent, dislikable people on earth go to a cabin in the woods to better understand how it changed their friend's life. It COULD have worked. It would have required the filmmaker to have fun with the idea. He did not. Every second of this pretentious crap is deadly serious. One gets the feeling that the filmmaker has never had a moment of fun in his life and wants his audience to be just as miserable as he is. Don't fall for it, don't bother watching this sorry mess.

This got passed around a lot the last few days, so i decided to check it out. Only 80 minutes - why the hell not? Starts cool - some interesting dialogue- i think i recognized one of the actors right away, maybe even another. Felt almost like this older indie movie called Compliance a few years back. Then it really starts to open up - once they get called to go upstate - cabin, yada yada. But then - to it's credit - the film gets kinda wild and weird. Not my cup of tea honestly - the philosophizing got to be sometimes to much for me - but the acting was honestly kinda great throughout and it really had a cohesive look. I recommend for folks looking for more a creepy meditation than anything else.

Lat time I watched a christian film tricking you to watch it under the guise of horror/thriller, I sat through was just as empty and boring as this one. Fortunately I was doing some painting whilst this was on in the background.

At no point at all was it interesting, captivating or clever. Somehow I waited if there would be a twist. Nope. Just christians trying to reel you in under false pretences.

The camera work was quite good actually, the acting was dismal, even though the actors didn't have much to work with, so they did their best.

Why not make an overtly christian movie, with colour, love, proper story lines, teaching whilst being entertaining?

I watched some overtly christian films as a kid, like Jesus of Nazareth and found them highly interesting. Not enough to make me believe but I didn't get bored and it was entertaining historically. Plus I knew what it was about. No tricks needed.

Happy to say that I am still a non believer and even more so after this really bad excuse of veiled preaching. I don't like being duped.

Please just own up to it, put into the title or the description, that this is a christian film. I wonder why the makers of this movie haven't learned from their own film's meaning?

Surprisingly, I managed to stay for the entire duration of this movie, so that's one thing that was going for it, however the production value is very low, looks like shot on an iphone without much direction and retakes. Even the cuts between the scenes is if done by a free editing software.

Surprisingly the acting is above average here, although the chemistry between the different actors is mediocre, as very common to this level of production quality, it does seem like the actors make an effort and care about their acting level and the characters they portray.

One major thing to remember coming in to see this movie is that this is a Christianity movie with ideas rotating around biblical and faith elements (such as the sacrifice of a son and others). If you are not familiar with the bible stories and expecting some hard-core horror movie you will be deeply disappointed. The value of this movie as action/horror is extremely low.

Overall I cannot really recommend this movie, all I can do is commend the actors and the director for producing a watchable movie for such low budget, but it is really a sub-par watch. Exact score: 4.4 / 10.