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A group of boys
on holiday with their families decide
to take a hike in the woods to find out whether the
legend of serial killer Cappy is real or not. Well
guess what? It is, and the boys soon find themselves
running for their lives. Unfortunately they have no
idea where they're going. Will they be able to survive
this holiday of horror or will they all end up victims
of Cappy and his demented sons?
I was browsing eBay one day for some new horror flicks
to review when I stumbled up on an advance screener of
this flick. I figured it was a homemade Hills Have
Eyes rip-off but soon found out that this was indeed
getting a real DVD release in October so I decided to
check it out. So was I right? Well, yes and no. Yes,
it does indeed look homemade (despite the fact that
IMDB lists its budget as $750,000 which doesn't seem
plausible). And no, it's not a The Hills Have Eyes
rip-off. Other than the similar title, this hasn't
got anything in common with The Hills Have Eyes so why
they decided to slap this cheesy title on it is beyond
me. A bad marketing ploy perhaps?
Anyway, The Woods Have Eyes revolves around a group of
relatively young boys who go into the woods to find
out whether the legend of Cappy, a demented serial
killer, is real or not. Naturally it is and he's also
got two very deranged sons by his side. This was far
from as bad as I had expected it to be. Inspired by
true events, this horror flick drew my thoughts to
Stephen Kings classic "Stand By Me" where a bunch of
young boys have to work together in order to survive
a series of horrible events. Naturally it never comes
near the quality of Stand By Me but I truly do
appreciate the effort.
With a higher budget I'm sure that this could have
been a decent movie but unfortunately The Woods Have
Eyes also has a lot of things going against it. The
acting is not one of them, nor is the directing, but
the most important thing of all is - the story. The
movie has an incredibly slow pace for most of the
time and it repeats itself over and over without ever
really going anywhere. Cappy and his two sons aren't
very scary villains either (I guess I've had enough of
deranged hillbillies) and the fact that the entire
cast consists of young boys doesn't exactly help
either. Sure, these boys are good actors but I rarely
enjoy horror movies where kids are the ones in danger.
I didn't appreciate the fact that it was too dark to
see what was going on for most of the time either but
I guess that was a budget problem. Perhaps they should
have just shot the entire movie in the daytime and then
put a darker layer on it in post so that we'd be able
to see what was happening on the screen. But I guess
this is a common mistake in low-budget horror flicks
so I'm ready to overlook that.
For some reason, I still found The Woods Have Eyes
rather enjoyable though since it had its moments and
was easy to sit through. I was even considering giving
this movie a 3/5... that is until the ending came.
If you've seen Sleepy Hollow High, you know how cheated
you feel when the ending makes the entire movie feel
like a waste of time. Had they only cut away the ending
this would have been a much better movie. Anyway, in
the end, The Woods Have Eyes is a watchable low-budget
horror flick with a semi-original story but definitely
not something that you have to check out.
We get a decapitation, an arrow through the head, and
some gory impalements. Decent.
I quite enjoyed the rock jingle that they played over
and over again. The overall score wasn't half bad.
Watchable and semi-original horror flick where a bunch
of young boys find themselves hunted by three deranged
hillbillies. Unfortunately it has a lot going against
it and in the end it was just repeating itself. Worth
a rent if you skip the ending, but if you don't, then
don't bother checking it out at all.
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