Plot
Four friends looking to escape the
madness of the city head out into the woods for a peaceful camping trip. However
events take a turn for the worst when a cold and frightened girl turns up at
their camp site looking for her boyfriend. From then on, the idyllic weekend
turns into a nightmare as the friends are stalked by a deadly force.
Review
I got just a little taste of The Blair
Witch Project when I had finished watching this. Whether that's a good thing
or a bad thing obviously depends on whether you like The Blair Witch Project
or not. For me it was a bit ho-hum and the same can be said about Dead
Wood. It doesn't do an awful lot in 85 minutes and isn't really engrossing
enough to warrant a repeat viewing. But there are one or two signs that some of
the people involved here have some talent and a bigger budget may have helped
matters dramatically. It also helps that this is a British film which means that
we do our own thing and don't go with the times. Torture porn is where it's at
the moment so it's nice to see the UK horror scene is bucking the trend and just
making whatever horror films it wants instead of just rehashing Hostel or
Saw.
With a reasonably short running time, you'd expect the film to kick in pretty
quickly but after the inevitable opening death scene to set the stall, the film
drags it's heels for what seems like forever. The characters trek off through
the woods and the film is padded out by plenty of wildlife shots of weasels and
deer. There's even the token "we've got no mobile phone signal" moment which
every modern horror set in the middle of nowhere has decided to include. The
characters seem very forced as if they were told to improvise their dialogue on
the spot instead of rehearsing a script. You don't really get to feel for any of
them so when they start to go missing, you don't miss them. Not a great deal
happens even when the first person goes missing. They just wander around the
woods aimlessly looking for a way out. I know it's set in the woods but did they
have to be walking/running through at almost every given moment? Even when the
"action" kicks in the force starts picking them off one-by-one, the film never
seems to have an urgency to pick up the pace. The story doesn't really go into
much detail about what is going on so you're almost left to think for
yourselves. Looking at it, Dead Wood just doesn't get you involved in the
film at all. There's no major hooks. The story doesn't do a lot. The characters
are just bland and dull. Suddenly the short running time of 85 minutes turns
into a gruelling marathon of endurance and whether you can last until the end
before you give up.
Actually you shouldn't give up at
the half-way stage. Despite clichés like shadowy outlines jerking across the
camera, rustling trees in the woods to indicate something otherworldly is
coming, flashlights going out at inappropriate moments, characters falling over
when being chased, characters splitting up in the middle of nowhere, etc. there
are a few moments of skill and vision. The up-close-and-personal camera work
does add an element of panic to the stalking and chase scenes. Lots of close-ups
of scared faces in the woods fill the end half of the film which totally reeks
of The Blair Witch Project. Noises in the distance. Flashlights shining
into the dark abyss of the woods looking for something. There's even a few
scenes borrowed from The Evil Dead in which the survivors find an old
shack in the woods and barricade themselves in from the menace outside, which
charges towards them in a nauseating Evil Dead-style POV shot. I guess
that I should be crediting the cameraman on The Evil Dead then for his
fine work, not the plagiarist here. The limited amount of special effects are
excellent when they are used and it's clear that with a bigger budget, more
could have been made of this. The "deadly force" has a tendency to absorb it's
victims into trees which leads to all manner of awesome moments of people being
slowly turned into bark. In all honesty, they are that good that they deserve to
be in a better film.
Verdict
Dead Wood is quite simply
an inferior cross-breed between The Evil Dead and The Blair Witch
Project. I'm not trying to knock the hard work that has gone into an indie
film like this but borrowing elements from two massively successful films isn't
going to make a decent flick. When you read highly positive reviews from across
the world before you sit down to watch and it turns out this uninspired and
dreary, it's a big let down. Thankfully I'm here to set the record straight.
