The Legend of Sorrow Creek (2007)

Are you tired of your movies having any budget or financial means put into making them at all? Well, meet The Legend of Sorrow Creek.

Director: Michael Penning

Starring: Freya Ravensbergen, Matt Turner

IMDb

Co-written with Clayton and Kayleigh.

This thing was co-produced and co-filmed by Geoff Klein, who is a mini-celebrity of the Cinema Freaks blog as he directed Bikini Girls on Ice, which I reviewed three years ago. As I am not one to look down my nose at a man who could make something of that quality, of course I was going to give this a chance! (I’m also glad to see he’s kept up appearances by directing something else called Pinup Dolls on Ice four years after his first masterpiece.)

The Legend of Sorrow Creek, however, is a personal project – written and directed by a guy named Michael Penning, who also did the music, co-produced it and edited the sound for the film. Various other people sharing his last name, who I can only assume are relatives, also worked on the film in various capacities – including a guy named William Penning who plays one of the ghosts in the film. Given that, I’m sure this will be a well-rounded and balanced film with no flaws at all.

Heh heh heh…heh heh…heh.

We start off with some highly annoying scenes of a girl getting hanged, shot with constant flashes to black – I suppose this is to create some kind of atmosphere, but really it’s kind of like a kid turning the lights on and off repeatedly to tell a ghost story at camp. Oh, and then we get a title sequence where the letters slowly fade in from black – yeah, guys; probably not a good fuckin’ idea when your title is five words long. Thank the Heavens they just do the Sorrow Creek part like that…

We then get the sheriff and some braniac from a college walking in the woods talking about an abandoned civilization in the woods or something – apparently after a series of incidents that spooked the residents of this town near the woods, everyone just packed their shit and left. Chief among them being when a super-religious father carved his daughter’s eyes out because he thought she had seen the devil, and then hung her – the scene from the opening, apparently. I guess that’s a better reason to leave than piranhas killing everyone.

I'm really not sure why they had to come out into the middle of the woods to have this conversation, as they don't even go to the scene of the crime at any point; they just stand there and talk in a random spot in the woods. Why couldn't this have happened down at the sheriff's office again? Also, look at how bad that pixellated video quality is. Is this just one of those mid-90s interactive video role playing games or something?

Then we get a bunch of people hangin’ out in the woods after one of them got a fish hook stuck in his hand. The only thing that would make this scene better is if they broke out into song during it like in the 2010 version of Don’t Go in the Woods.

Then they go get lost in the woods on their way back, not even knowing if the way they’re going will lead them back to their cottage. Sure, they have this theory that the river will lead them back to the cottage faster than the other way, but they don’t know – I mean all it does is lead them to a river full of water that nearly makes main girl Kayla throw up:

Eh, it's no big deal; this is where Dasani gets their water from, and you know they're trustworthy.

I also love some of the dialogue we get here, like this one guy talking about his heart problem. One of the girls asks what happens if he doesn’t take his medication in time and he cheerfully responds: “My heart will explode, and I’ll die.” It’s pretty goddamn funny, and sounds more like the guy was reading off a cue card for an instructional school video or something. You know, a school video about dying from a heart problem. The best kind.

One girl, Jesse, says she wants to stay behind and sketch the markings on a tree, and says she won’t get lost and will find her own way back later on. Like the amazing friends they are, they agree to this insane plan and leave her alone in the woods as it’s getting darker. I guess it’s an alright plan though. I mean they do have a good insurance plan for this kind of thing under Obamacare – it’s called the Blair Witch plan, and if you make a home video movie of your experiences lost in the woods, you can get your insurance to pay for any and all injuries.

So it gets to be dusk and Kayla and her boyfriend Ashton Kutcher here have a conversation about how he’ll understand if she doesn’t hang out with him as much because she’s trying to get published. It IS impossible to work on a relationship while also waiting on emails from publishing companies, so I get it. Best line from this scene is when she chides him about wanting more time to hang out with his “other girlfriend” – I dunno, given how little we know about these characters, maybe she’s not joking after all and is actually the other woman in his sordid romantic affair.

Eventually after it’s nighttime already, they FINALLY realize Jesse hasn’t come back yet and MAYBE they should go find her. Why start now? I’m sure you can wait until you’re back at your day jobs and she still hasn’t returned yet to start panicking. After a creepy phone call of Jesse crying for help over static, they really get worried and go out to the car – though they forget the keys for one, and two, Ashton Kutcher says he doesn’t want to go anywhere and just wants to “get ready” in case they have to.

Yeah, man, let's sit in the car JUST TO GET READY in case we have to go anywhere. Y'know, because we usually get really anxious when things get stressful and just end up driving into walls instead. THIS TIME we're really prepared!

Uh, your friend just called the house crying – well, the phone didn’t work and it was an illusion, but still, she hasn’t come back yet anyway – what more do you need? Does your friend possibly being in danger not seem like a big deal? Then they see a large caveman-looking guy standing in their headlights not responding when they call out to him, which I’m sure is normal.

Pfft, that's just your senile old neighbor getting lost again. He's not scary, he just needs help getting back home.

The guy is clearly still in the area, which prompts our heroes to do the natural thing – not go anywhere in the car and instead go back in the house themselves. Fortunately the guy they saw was an optical illusion. I mean phew, dodged a bullet there! What would they have done if it really WAS a madman waiting to kill them? That would’ve just made it really stupid that they didn’t immediately leave. Also fortunately for them – luck is just going their way tonight – Jesse comes back all on her own! I mean, sure she’s scratched up to hell and half insane, but at least she isn’t possessed! Oh, wait, yes she is:

Either he's trying to date-rape her, or she's possessed. Either way I think this situation is bad news all over.

Also this prompts the funniest heart attack scene from a movie ever - maybe next time you should NOT let the guy with the heart condition be in a horror movie about evil spirits and possession. Just a thought.

Aaaaand I'm going to hell for laughing at this scene.

This prompts Ashton Kutcher to go into the biggest and toughest game of tug-o-war ever, which is REALLY GRIPPING when the girl on the other side of the door is like 110 pounds when soaking wet:

I guess this guy's muscles are just wet noodles.

Possessed Jesse is not given any real explanation. But you know what REALLY makes me mad? When they show Jesse walking down the hall and one window has sunlight shining it, while the other one at the back of the hall is CLEARLY still night outside!

Well that's it, this movie just lost ALL credibility with me!

Jesse tries to kill Heart Attack Boy, but when she realizes what she’s done, she moves the knife across her throat without actually making contact. Oh, my bad, was that supposed to be cutting her throat for real?

I personally only like horror movies where they cut their throats FOR REAL on screen. 

Now we get what this movie REALLY excels at though … scenes of Ashton Kutcher and Kayla sitting around holding each other crying, saying they need to leave but never actually doing so.

I jumped around for over a half hour of the movie's running time - I'm just fuckin' astounded that they keep doing this same set-up OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

"I'm so scared, we should leave!"

"Nah, we should just keep repeating this same scene over and over again until we puke!"

"Okay!"

"On second thought, ewww."

Sure, their car gets destroyed and sort of strands them there, but how is that an excuse? They could still leave on foot, especially considering Kayla used to vacation here all the time and should know the way out of the woods, but no, then we wouldn’t have a movie. I don’t even get it … they’re scared of the ghost guy around the house, so they stay in the house. If you can make any sense of that, let me know, because I sure as fuck can't.

Eventually they do try to leave, going into the toolshed out back, but Ashton Kutcher gets a chainsaw dropped on his leg and this somehow breaks his leg. Kayla takes him back into the house and says she’ll go get help, but I don’t know why she’s bothering; clearly she’ll end up back there in five minutes crying with him some more about leaving – why stop now? Just have that same scene on a loop for the next hour; that’s good cinema.

I guess she does actually make it to the road though. She doesn’t make it far though, as a bunch of ghosts appear to her, including a little girl with anuses for eyes and the Halloween Remake Michael Myers guy from before:

You’d think they would have just killed her, but no, she’s back in the next scene. She wanders back through the woods and finds the river from before that choked her when she drank from it. She also finds a trap door in the ground and, being one of the smartest young people of our generation, she gets in and traps herself in there. I’m really just waiting here for Jason to open up that box and stab this girl, but the filmmakers apparently couldn’t find a goalie mask in time.

I never thought I'd be able to make a comparison between a low budget supernatural slasher film and that movie Buried with Ryan Reynolds, but there you go.

Instead we get the box filling up with water as someone pushes the box into the river which leads down into a lake somehow. You’d think THIS would be the end for her, but nope, she escapes somehow! Because you know, almost drowning in an enclosed box randomly placed in the woods is really easy to escape from, and she’s just a natural at it. When it comes to finding help in a place she’s been going to all her life, however, she’s stumped!

Come to think of it, if she’s been going here since she was a kid, and the town was abandoned after that guy killed his daughter in the 1800s, WHY is all this ghost shit just happening to her NOW? Did the ghosts just see her as a kid and go “nah, we’ll wait til she’s of age; we’re really considerate ghosts!”?

Oh well – back at Casa Possession Murder, Ashton Kutcher lamely crawls outside to the tool shed where he broke his leg. Because second time’s the charm, ya know; THIS time it’ll go fine! Except it doesn’t and he gets gasoline poured on his face. This creates the best camera effect of all time – the “I forgot to wear my glasses today” style:

"Hey, son, it's Mr. Jenkins from down the road. I noticed you were in trouble and decided to come see if I could help you. Are you alright?" OK, I know it's actually one of the ghosts coming to get him, but wouldn't that have been the funnier ending?

Meanwhile out in the woods, we see the ghosts somehow got Kayla, too, and have turned her eyes into anuses as well:

We also see that the film’s budget was good enough to include a noose for her to hang herself from.

Then we switch back to the sheriff and the other dude from the opening of the film. They blather on some more about the movie we just saw being a mysterious crime that hasn’t been solved, and they find a picture of that girl from the opening with no eyes, apparently drawn by Jesse while she was lost in the woods. Except it’s really not very accurate, since in the drawing she clearly has both her eyes:

I have to come clean with you guys now about something that pains me to admit: Ashton Kutcher wasn't really in this movie. It was a joke based on the main guy's appearance. I'm so sorry I deceived you all like this. I can never show my face in public again!

What were the ghosts even trying to do here? Kill the main characters? They had multiple opportunities to do so, but kept letting the characters live (even when they had Kayla surrounded and alone on the empty road) for no reason but that the movie needed more screen-time. Screen-time which, if you forgot, was mostly taken up by the two main characters sitting on the couch crying.

Also, the possession subplot was totally random, as it only happened to one character before seemingly being forgotten about entirely. Add to that production value that looks more like a 1990s movie rather than a 2007 one and tons of dialogue awkwardly shoehorned in as exposition, and you have what mostly feels like an unfinished home video project. But with that said, the ideas are at least decent and not just riding on current trends to be flashy and get noticed, and the raw darkness of the woods scenery is at least trying to conjure up a feeling close to fear.

So in conclusion, I’d totally watch this again over anything Lionsgate is pushing out these days!

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

REVIEW: Don't Go in the Woods (1981)

Slasher horror movies were the big trend in the late 70s early 80s, with everyone trying their hand at making one. And honestly, they shouldn’t have. That’s a phrase people usually use to be all polite and tell another person that he or she has done something far nicer than the original person deserves, and it sort of applies here – hell, I put far more thought into this review than there ever was in this movie. Yes, this is Don’t Go in the Woods, and it’s the original film that the 2010 musical slasher movie of the same name was based on. Awesome, right? Can’t you just feel the anticipation for more great musical moments?

Director: James Bryan

Starring: The woods

IMDb

What’s that? This has nothing to do with the 2010 version and the only music we’re going to get out of it is god-awful screaming that would even be out of place on a Brokencyde album? Wow. That sounds absolutely hideous! So I guess I’ll review it…

Yes, this is a special kind of movie…I mean, literally you won’t even be missing much if you just didn’t even read this review. Just press the ‘back’ button right now. There are so many other things you could be doing instead of reading a review for this waste of time, vapid-ass movie, and I’ll list them right now: You could plant a tree. You could read a book. You could go talk to your local congressman about what to do to stop violence against the homeless. You could…aw, damn, you’re still there, aren’t you? You’re still reading this one. Well, alright. I mean, this is the kind of movie that I’m pretty sure had no actual director on set most of the time. I bet he went off to drink at the pub during most of this shitty movie. But if you really want to continue…sigh…let’s get into Don’t Go in the Woods…the 1981 version.

We start off with the credits! Yes, the first couple of minutes is nothing but the credits, which usually are at the end of the movie but here are just slapped right at the beginning. I guess so you know right away who to blame for this whole fiasco.

Pfft, yeah, story and screenplay, as if to imply this movie ever had either of those things.

After that, we get transported to THE WOODS, the hot spot for every slasher movie ever, apparently, where a hot chick is getting chased through the woods by some unknown attacker. She falls in the water and…that’s kind of the end of her. We don’t get to see the beginning of the chase or the end. Kinda disappointing there, movie.

This movie is cutting edge - I think she really got her blouse dirty in this scene.

Then we get something completely different as a GUY is walking through the woods and gets killed! Get it? It’s different because it’s a different sex AND he’s just WALKING through the woods as opposed to running. Oh, and something weird happens where he gets killed by a bunch of trees.

You can't see it that well, but the trees CUT HIS ARM OFF. How?! How is that possible? You don't establish at any other point in the film that the trees are evil, but here they can kill a man and cut off his arm. Oh, who am I kidding; I don't really care. As long as it's not The Happening, I'll buy anything you throw at me.

I guess this was the inspiration for that infamous Evil Dead scene, which I guess makes this a good movie. Hell, don’t even go see the Evil Dead remake this weekend. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m sure this is the better movie, as it obviously has more to do with the true spirit of Evil Dead.

We then get introduced to our main characters, the trees. There are some other side characters, like this group of Brady Bunch rejects wearing costumes that look like a South Park impersonation of wildlife preservationists…

Boy or girl? You decide...a common game to play in this film, sadly enough.

…but mostly it’s the trees which will be the focus of the film. I mean, why else would the director focus more shots on the woods than on the actual characters? There are so many scenes in this thing that just up and end, and then the director goes back to showing us stills of any random nature documentary. In fact, I think that’s what happened with this movie. There were actually two film crews in the woods; one making a slasher movie and one making a nature documentary. The slasher movie crew caught some of the nature documentary’s footage and just figured, screw it, nobody will ever watch this movie anyway, and the director won’t notice because he’s too busy getting drunk off his ass.

Alright, alright, I’m sorry for going on so many tangents in this review, but honestly, what the hell am I supposed to say? There’s no story. The first half hour of this thing is just the Brady Bunch rejects wandering around spouting dialogue that sounds more like the inside of a Safe Camping pamphlet they give you at the wildlife reserve. How am I supposed to be entertained by this? Is it bad that I’m actually wishing for the usual slasher tropes like sex and drugs? Please, somebody, get me out of this extended, badly produced after school special on camping etiquette!

I guess after a while we see the police trying to solve some of the unfinished murder scenes from earlier. We waste precious screentime that you could be using instead to walk out and go home by showing a bunch of characters talking about pointless things. The front desk lady gets asked several times where the sheriff is, and she tells them he’s “busy.” Right. “Busy.” I bet he’s just in his office playing golf.

Huh. I was correct...he was playing golf. And he also looks like a whale that ate Andy Griffith.

Uh, wait. No. That can’t be the sheriff. I’m sorry, I just think I’d rather have a sheriff more concerned with my public safety than where he’s going to find his next snack. And I know it’s mean to make fun of fat people, but come on; throughout this whole movie he is shown to be completely incompetent and with pretty much no redeeming qualities. Hell, he’s lazing around in his office playing golf right after somebody was murdered in his town. What kind of asshole is this guy? Hell, even his weight can’t be normal. I bet he got that fat from EATING LIVE CHILDREN. Look at him! He’s the kind of sicko who would eat children not even because he’s evil, so much as he’s just hungry.

Ugh, okay, whatever. We then see that the killer doesn’t like this lady’s paintings. And so he spices them up a bit.

I always said murder could improve modern art. I'm glad movies like this are finally listening to me.

The killer looks sort of like John Goodman if he went insane and started living as a crazy wild man in the forest. He’s completely ludicrous, is never given any explanation and spends most of the movie screaming horrendously at the top of his lungs. I mean, it’s god-awful – one of the most painful things I’ve ever heard in my life. Jesus; it sounds like a monkey getting butt-raped by a walrus. It’s literally like someone just took some still shots of the woods and then vomited all over them in the editing studio. I’d get angrier about it, this heinous noise, but really, what is the point anyway? Nobody ever took a second look at this once it was patched up to something resembling a movie. I bet half the people involved forgot about this thing a month after completion.

After that, we get a sex scene between an 80s blond version of Nicolas Cage and, apparently, Michael Jackson:

There's no way that isn't two men. Please don't even TRY to tell me that's a man and a woman sharing an intimate moment - that is two men!

There’s an image I never wanted to see. Fortunately they both get killed off by more bad editing and lack of funding for gore effects. Ahh, how karma pays back, and pays back well.

Let’s move on now, to something completely new and alien to this movie up to now: an actual plot! Yes, 45 minutes in and we finally decide which characters to focus on…isn’t that amazing? If you’re wondering, it’s these two:

They’re gender-androgynous like all the other young characters in the film, and they’re pretty bland…though they do actually find a way back to civilization, which is more than I can say for some of the other characters. The one girl, who has been injured, gets hospitalized, and the other guy goes insane. I’m not even making that up: he goes insane in the short time between this scene and the next time we see him, because apparently seeing a bunch of dead bodies wrapped up Black Christmas style with plastic suffocating them is traumatic or something. Pfft.

Either way, it’s bad writing. Surprised? I didn’t think so.

The cops finally hit on the great truth of what to do next – go into the woods where all of the victims have come from. Yup, it took them a whole movie to figure out this insanely easy truth, to just go where all the dead people are coming from, and MAYBE that’s how they’ll find their killer! What, did the sheriff just spend too much time eating children to do that before? Why the deliberation, you assholes? Any other county would’ve been out there five minutes after the first body showed up looking for clues! Not these guys. They’re the easy going, laid back and fun police department…child cannibalism debatable.

Apparently, the one crazy guy escapes from police custody – apparently it’s about as hard as opening a door of your own free will and just casually walking out. So out in the woods, we see more great policework, as they apparently bring the injured girl from the hospital out to look at the dead bodies and help them find the guy, because, yeah, this really happens! I’m sure police in real life always bring traumatized victims out to the crime scene, show them the dead bodies and the murder weapons…yeah, awesome work, you idiots. What’s next? Just…leaving her out there in the woods long after the night settles in, and then just shrugging it off and saying they’ll look for her in the morning?

No. No no no. Not even these morons could be that stupid!

…could they?

Well, according to the movie, yes. Yes, that is what the police do. Are you shitting me? What was the thought process? “Oh, she’s not following us…let’s just keep going, guys!” What were they thinking?

I really hope whatever donut shop these yokels are headed to blows up upon arrival.

Well, I know what the sheriff was thinking…

Well, I can speculate anyway.

There's this other chick from earlier who somehow survived up to now - I love how there's a scene where she finds a taco shell in the garbage, on the ground, and picks it up and eats it. Like she's really been gone long enough to resort to eating garbage. Lady, the road isn't that far away! Find it and go to a Denny's somewhere! If the other morons in this movie can navigate their ways to civilization, I'm sure you can figure it out! But sadly that never happens, because she gets killed off a few seconds later. And here is where all of the budget for this movie went:

Was it worth it?

We also get some scenes of a guy in a wheelchair aimlessly rolling through the woods. They’re randomly interspliced with the scenes of the cop buffoonery, and mostly seem pointless, until he gets his head cut off. Why? How? Who the hell was he? Why would you ever go into the woods randomly if you’re stuck in a wheelchair and have nobody around to help you? The answer to all of these questions is “no.”

After a clumsy fight scene between the crazy guy and the killer, the movie decides that it’s over now, probably because the rest of the crew all got bored and fell asleep, or just left the set entirely, never to return. And who can blame them? This is the kind of movie that mostly functions as a way to melt your brain. Like if you want a faster way than watching the current state of American economics, just turn on this movie. I never thought I would say this, but I’d rather even watch the 2010 musical crapfest over this movie! It’s seriously just nonsense, from beginning to end. There’s nothing about this film that really adds up, and frankly, with all the screaming and yelling without any purpose, it’s literally painful to watch sometimes.

But overall, this is just so confusing and strange that it’s impossible to actually hate. It’s like an alien artifact from a time long gone. While horrendously bad, there isn’t much about it that will really offend or disgust you. If I can’t even understand the mindset behind the film’s creation, how can I really hate it? A question to ponder.

But enough of these strange experiments in the most underground and unknown films around…let us venture again into something much more deserving of my hatred and spite...something so loathsome, terrible and all-around shitty that it ascends to a new level of hideousness and deplorable rotten spirits...

Brace yourselves!

PS. If you're interested in watching Don't Go in the Woods (1981), the full movie is up on YouTube for anyone to see! Go, my audience, and witness the 80s shlock in all its magnificent incompetence!

Images copyright of their original owners, I own none of them.

REVIEW: Don't Go in the Woods (2010)

Wow, just wow. I don’t think I’ve seen something this beautifully insane and wrongheaded since The Stuff smacked me in the face last year around this time. I mean, what am I supposed to say? If the words “slasher musical” don’t sound perfectly batshit nuts to you, then perhaps this film will finally find its audience in some blissfully ignorant minority. A blissfully ignorant minority, however, that I want no part of whatsoever. Please, if this sounds like your type of movie, stay the hell away from me. And from the rest of humanity.

Director: Vincent D'Onofrio

Starring: Matt Sbegelia, Ali Tobia

IMDb

Yes, Don’t Go in the Woods, the only film directed by sort of famous actor Vincent D’Onofrio, and frankly, I think he should go back to the drawing board a bit. I mean…a slasher musical. I’m not even making that up – it’s a slasher film, and most of the runtime that would normally be taken up by a bunch of indie rock ass-hats playing bland, uninteresting and sometimes actually ear-splitting-awful music. The ideas in this film, the choices made…I just don’t understand. It’s like a strange Frankenstein’s Monster-esque abomination of epic proportions. It’s one thing to make a horrendous generic slasher movie, but quite another to take the basic format of a slasher movie and then…do whatever D’Onofrio did here.

Alright, well I’m never going to convey exactly how strange this is by simply raving about it like a madman. I’m going to have to actually talk about it, aren’t I? Oh, God. I’m actually going to have to look at this film again? The horror!

Eh, I’m over it now.

We start off with this title card:

Well, allow me to retort by turning my volume down to a moderate level. Take that, you damn movie! I rebelled by turning my volume down to an inoffensively quiet tone so as to not bother the neighbors! I'm such a badass.

We then are introduced to a bunch of idiots in a car singing to some truly horrible hybrid of acoustic rock, reggae and Beatles-style pop. I would post some sound clips, but I actually want people to keep reading the rest of the review, so I’ll just skip it. Safe to say, it’s bad. It’s really bad. Not all of the music in this movie is this bad, but the opening song will even make your pets cover their ears in agony. Christ. These guys really need some weed…

What? The lead guy in the band just threw the weed out the window? The audacity of this prick…they bought that from a perfectly decent drug dealer behind a K-Mart that morning. And really, the rock band doesn’t want weed? That’s how Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd made most of their best albums back in the day! Somehow I’m not convinced these guys are really in tune with the spirit of rock. And even beyond that, if there's no weed, how is the movie's slasher killer going to have a reason to hack them up? These morons better have a lot of sex out in the woods to make up for this indiscretion!

So apparently their plan is just to…go out into the woods and play music for a while, hoping to come back with some of the best songs ever that can get them a record deal. Apparently some record exec douche-face is coming out to join them for some reason – I guess having a corporate presence breathing down their necks would help the songwriting process? But he gets killed off, and they never even ask about him again for the rest of the damn movie, so I guess D’Onofrio just forgot all about it…

Oh, there's a sign that says the title of the movie right when they're going in? Who put it there? And why? I NEED ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS...nah, I'm over it. Still though, a more accurate sign would have read DON'T WATCH THIS MOVIE.

While that’s going on, the lead singer guy, Nick, takes all of their cell phones and smashes them with an ax. You may think this is too extreme. However…well, no, it is too extreme. But at least we also get to see a crazy man chopping up one of his shoes into little bits.

And the weird thing is, there’s no reason for it. Even after he does it, Nick, otherwise a complete insensitive ass throughout the film, is like “dude, why did you do that?” And there’s never a reason given. It’s like D’Onofrio and the production team just gave the guy an ax and he chopped up his shoe impromptu in a fit of madness, without it being scripted at all. Maybe it’s not a good idea to hire crazy people off the streets, D’Onofrio. Just saying.

Later on, Mr. Ax Chop Man steps on a little leaf and somehow gets a gigantic bloody welt on his foot…which is also never made anything of, and he goes on to seduce a bunch of beautiful women. Presumably while trailing blood on the ground and wincing every time he has to take a step. But we’ll get to that.

No, really what makes up the bulk of this movie is the songs. Yes, the rumors were true, a bona fide slasher musical. What planet am I on? Since most of these parts are just long, repetitive segments of bland music broken up by even more nonsensical scenes that actually TRY to be a musical, it’s tough to really go all play-by-play on these scenes. However, I will say that the main guy, Nick, has a voice about as endearing as a tone deaf drunk man with laryngitis. He can’t stay on key and mostly just sounds completely awful and heinous. And we’re supposed to believe people actually listen to this guy and unironically think he’s good…maybe they’re all tone deaf, and that’s the movie’s twist at the end.

Please, please, please follow the path of Kurt Cobain rather than that of Nikki Sixx...

So despite the fact that the guys agreed to come out in the woods in solitude and write music, with nothing to distract them…a bunch of girls come and crash the party, bringing weed and loud, fun times with them – basically everything Nick said they wouldn’t have at the beginning. I’m so glad they explained what they were doing to these girls, so that they would not do exactly this. Oh, wait, I’m just being sarcastic for no reason again. Nick and his band of morons didn’t do that at all. Oh how I love the human ability to communicate. It isn’t just for singing pointless songs in a terrible slasher movie anymore!

Yeah, whatever's in that flask with the skull and crossbones on it would probably be great right now. Please, pass it over!

Either way, at least there’s some tits in the movie now; that oughta brighten it up. Even if this one girl does look sort of like a female Filipino version of Sid Vicious. And what’s this? She’s the only talented singer in the entire film?

Color me surprised!

No, really. Color me surprised.

So of course she gets killed off a few scenes later, along with the other girl who is mad that one of the guys, I’m not sure who (and do you really care?) who she was dating, is now with someone else. They go off into the woods and she starts singing, apparently under the assumption that she’s a cast member in The Sound of Music, performed by talentless people. They even superimpose her face over the top of the scene like a low-budget music video.

There's a joke about that 'o' face in here somewhere, but I'm not crass enough to make it, so I'll let you supply your own.

What is this? Surely it’s not a horror movie. I mean, D’Onofrio, man…half the time I do movies like this, by this point in the review, I’m already knee-deep in the murders going on, as well as the plotholes involved in said murders. What the hell am I watching here? Movie, if REPO: The Genetic Opera is outdoing your script in terms of making sense, there’s something seriously wrong!

Okay, well anyway. They get into a car and, for no reason at all, they get killed off by a man wearing black, who takes the time first to smash their car up with a sledgehammer. He spends more time doing that then he does actually killing the girls! And trust me, I’m not planning on going all bleeding-hearts on you guys this time. I fully support killing off people who participated in this movie. However, I do not support the needless wreckage of vehicles. Think of how many red lights that car could have run!

Just imagine the person who spent money on that car and had it appear in this movie. I think car dealerships everywhere are cringing in their sleep, as if someone walked over their graves...

Also, seriously? You don’t even have the budget to show the gore, so you just cut to black as soon as any contact is made? I’m starting to see why D’Onofrio put so much music in this: he didn’t have any money to shoot actual gory slasher kill scenes. Maybe you should have just scrapped the idea to make this a movie, and directed a high school production of West Side Story, dude.

Meanwhile, back at the Hitler Youth Indie Rock Band Camp, Nick wakes everyone up by splashing fizzy soda pop into their tents. It’s nice to know Vincent D’Onofrio, previously a star of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, never quite left boot camp:

"Are you quitting on me? Well, are you? Then quit, you slimy fucking walrus-looking piece of shit! Get the fuck off of my obstacle! Get the fuck down off of my obstacle! NOW! MOVE IT! Or I'm going to rip your balls off, so you cannot contaminate the rest of the world! I will motivate you, Private Pyle, IF IT SHORT-DICKS EVERY CANNIBAL ON THE CONGO!" - the kind of motivation this movie really needed, but never got...shame.

As long as this movie ends with Nick splattering his brains out in a bathroom after realizing his failure as a human being, I’m totally fine with it.

So, in any other movie, they’d at least notice the disappearance of the two girls and investigate it, right? Not this movie! They just go right on practicing, never even mentioning the girls again save for a cursory ‘hey, they said they were going to a hotel! Must be why they never tried to contact us or anything, right? Oh well. Just let em get kidnapped and raped.’ What a bunch of great friends. You know what else makes them great friends? The fact that they constantly make fun of the one blind guy in the band.

He sings a song called "I Don't Wanna Be Blind." Guess what it's about. That's right, it's about filing taxes.

And it’s not even like they’re creative with the jokes! Constantly, they just sort of point out that he’s blind. That’s the whole joke – he can’t see. Hilarious, right? Dudes, it’s not that funny. If you want to make some blind jokes, fine, but at least put some thought into it! It’s like walking up to a guy with a lisp and just going “HEY! YOU TALK SORTA FUNNY!” And then repeating that same joke every time you see him for the next three years. C’mon, movie; try better than Bulk and Skull-levels of bullying.

Man, you know what this movie needs? Some people getting murdered. That would lighten up the mood.

So, after about fifteen more minutes of nothing but songs that you won’t even remember a few seconds after they end…we get some trite romance going on, between Nick and this girl, who apparently slept with him once. Isn’t this exactly what you want to see when you pop in a DVD titled Don’t Go in the Woods? Well, I’ll give it some credit – it is closer to what a regular horror movie would do, so maybe D’Onofrio is finally getting to the damn point here.

Good, good, now have her fuck Nick and then have them both impaled with a hockey stick or something. Then you'd be on the right track for a slasher film.

Well, eventually it does finally happen. The kills, while rather terrible, do start to happen. Even if most of them are just cutting to black before we see any blood, like this one, which brings back the hallowed ‘sleeping bag kill’ popularized by Jason X!

It's a lost art in slasher movies.

There's also this scene, in which this one foreign girl and the girl who's trying to teach her English sing about...well, pretty much teaching a foreign girl English. It's a silly subject matter for a song, but when these girls do it? It's just flat out embarrassing, as they embellish the whole thing with ludicrous voices, stupid facial expressions and awful, awful melodies...seriously, you can just hear their careers, and by extension their hopes and dreams, dying with every note:

Aren't those the kinds of faces girls make in really horrible niche German porno movies?

After some more poorly filmed kill scenes, it’s just Nick and his kinda-sorta-girlfriend left alive, as Nick shows us how he can play a song so terrible that it makes him start bleeding from his neck and hands!

I…really have no idea what this is supposed to convey. Seriously, go watch this yourself; it’s on Netflix. Have a field day with it. Maybe some of the more pretentious among you will come back with some interpretation of this that makes sense. Is he killing himself? Is it all really in the girl’s head? Is the entire movie some kind of warped Lynchian subtext for the state of the music industry? I dunno. All I know is, THIS MUSIC IS TERRIBLE! He sings worse than William Hung if he had lead bricks strapped to his ears and his nuts were in a vice! It’s terrible!

After that, Nick jumps in the water. Nice way to ruin a good guitar there, you moron. He then gets out of the water and has a battle with the masked killer, who looks more like a Victorian England Gentleman cosplay if it was, well, a slasher movie killer doing that...

After killing him, the movie cuts to black and then shows us a very short scene where Nick is sitting with some record producer who holds up a CD that says Nick’s name and has the title Don’t Go in the Woods. The producer then says, “All you had to do [to get famous] was get rid of that band.” And that’s the end.

Uh, what? Am I supposed to glean some A-HA! moment from this? Is that supposed to be a twist? So he basically killed off his bandmates, or hired someone to kill them off…so he could record his own music and get famous off of it? Isn’t that a bit overkill? Not to mention the gaping plothole of the fact that no sane record label, that wanted to keep making money, would ever hire this guy. Here’s a novel idea: if you don’t like your band and don’t want to make music with them…QUIT THE GODDAMN BAND. GO SOLO. Anything! Anything as long as we don’t have to listen to more of your god-awful music!

So it makes sense that the end credits involve more of the same ear-splitting yowling and bland acoustic guitars as the rest of the movie had…that’s it; I’m convinced this is a lost level of Hell. There is no way anyone could have intended this to be enjoyable; it’s too horrendous, too maniacally unlistenable to any normal pair of ears!

So that’s Don’t Go in the Woods, and it’s…well, it’s special. There really is nothing else like this movie out there, and there’s a reason for that: it’s terrible. The acting is subpar, the story is a mess, and most of the movie is just these morons playing their rather unimpressive music. Once in a while, the songs don’t sound too bad, but is ‘not bad’ really the ideal standard to hold?

There was really no budget for this thing, so it’s hard to really come down on it for that, but the whole thing is just such a spectacle to behold. It’s literally so insane an idea that it’s really just amazing to think about what the creative thought process must have been like to come up with it. A slasher musical…I can’t stop saying it. The words themselves are so curiously bizarre when placed together. And really, after all is said and done, this IS at least trying to do something, even though it failed horribly at it. While it was a trainwreck, Don’t Go in the Woods was at least doing its own thing and had a clear purpose in mind. Can we say the same for The Devil Inside or Black Dahlia? I don’t think so.

So am I saying this movie was good? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. But I did find it at least interesting, and though D’Onofrio failed entirely at what he was trying to evoke, he at least tried, and there’s something to be said for that. So if you really want to see a musical slasher movie…go check yourself into a mental hospital. But if you want something interesting and experimental, if incredibly flawed, Don’t Go in the Woods wouldn’t be your worst choice ever. Maybe on the top 20 worst, but still, better than the majority of big budget horror films that came out last year. There is that.

The images in this review do not belong to me; they are copyright of their original owners.