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After several
years, serial killer Victor is back to
wreak some havoc at a small camp by a lake. The
unsuspecting teens soon start to drop one by one.
Who will survive this night of terror?
A rainy Sunday afternoon and nothing to watch, what
do you do? Well I decided to download some indie
horror flicks on demand through an amateur VOD site
(I give out my credit card number way too easily),
and Dark Woods was one of them. Was it worth the
2 dollars? Well, yes and no. After having just sat
through the painful movies "Silent Bloodnight" and
"Day Of The Ax", it was nice to see an indie slasher
that was actually somewhat watchable, and perhaps
this is why I'm going to be so kind with this review,
simply because it was watchable (something which the
previous two movies weren't).
The story is simple. A camp which has been closed down
for several years is re-opening and a group of camp
counsellors are working hard to set it up. But every
camp has a masked serial killer, and this one has
Victor - a madman dressed in camouflage clothes and
a matching mask. You know the story, we've seen it
lots of times before, and Dark Woods is unfortunately
closer to Bloody Murder than it is to Friday The 13th.
The budget is obviously extremely low and it's easy
to tell, the characters are all stereotypes and the
killer isn't very scary. Nor is his hobo companion
who served no real purpose other than to be silly and
mess up a potentially decent slasher flick.
What makes Dark Woods watchable is the fact that it
doesn't try to be anything other than a generic
slasher flick. It's by-the-numbers and doesn't waste
any energy on dialogues or twists. For a no-budget
slasher flick, this is probably for the best. The
entire cast and crew also seem to have been very
devoted to the project as, even though the acting is
bad, they're obviously doing the best that they can
and having fun with it. And when people have fun in
front of the camera, it shows and it puts you in a
good mood for whatever reason.
This really isn't a good slasher flick though and I'm
not trying to tell you that you should check it out,
because you probably shouldn't. The thing is that
I've sat through so many worthless slasher movies
lately with shoestring budgets, and this one comes
out on top since it's actually easy to watch it until
the end. It's not dull at all and for two dollars
you could do a whole lot worse - believe me.
Some dry stabbings, a couple of slashed throats and
some even dryer impalements.
I really dug the theme-melody which was similar to the
one in "Cold Prey". The rock and the redneck music
also worked fairly well. Overall, surprisingly
competent soundtrack I have to say.
I'm sure that had these guys had more money to work
with, this could have been a somewhat decent slasher
film, but as it is now, it's merely watchable at best.
If you're craving a new masked slasher film, Dark
Woods isn't all that bad, but it's not good either
and I'd probably recommend you to avoid it.
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