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Wilderness (2006)
Plot
A group of young offenders are sent away
to a military boot camp on a remote and supposedly uninhabited island to be
taught some serious lessons after one of their number commits suicide, brought
on by months of bullying. However they don't realise that a psychopath waits for
them on the island - someone trained and equipped as as experienced hunter and
determined to make them pay for what they have done via a serious of gruesome
booby traps.
Review
It's good to see the UK film industry
finally getting back on track with horror films. I mean after all, the British
gave the world Hammer Horror, which revolutionised the way we looked at horror
films back in the late 50s. With the demise of Hammer and the rise of more
splatter orientated flicks in the 70s, British horror suffered a dramatic death
which it has only begun to claw it's way back from. Like them or not, I'll at
least applaud the efforts of the likes of Dog Soldiers, Creep, The Descent,
28 Days Later and many others to try and rekindle that old magic using
different approaches and methods of execution. All of them look to have minor
budgets but that's no barrier for creative and passionate people in front of and
behind the camera. You can tell a good British horror apart from it's American
counterparts as, on the whole, they're not as insulting to your intelligence.
They're reasonably believable (Dog Soldiers did such a good job of
creating believable werewolves, you'd have thought the species actually
existed), have decent scripts on the whole and generally try and avoid as many
of the clichés as possible (how many of the recent British horror flicks have a
young cast of Hollywood types that plague American horrors?) and make the best
use of the tricks of the horror trade as opposed to just throwing as much money
into the film as possible.
Slotting in to the whole equation is Wilderness, the second directorial
effort from Michael J. Bassett who brought us the interesting-but-shallow
Deathwatch. Wilderness isn't going to win any awards for originality
and runs like a cross between Dog Soldiers, Saw, Deliverance and
Scum, weaving elements from them together to create a patchwork horror
flick. It starts off harshly enough inside the prison where the young offenders
are given their character development so that you know who to really boo later
on in the film. Foreign viewers may have a hard time understanding some of these
guys as well - the skinheads with ropey accents so commonly associated with our
prisons. The script doesn't do them any favours either, with lots of street
dialogue that upper-crust residents of this island would have trouble
understanding. With the exception of Sean Pertwee and Alex Reid, the rest of the
cast seems to have limited acting experience, which actually helps in this
situation because the characters aren't overacting or thinking too hard about
how they're coming off on camera. Their inexperience greatly adds to the realism
that the remoteness of the island brings. I like to see a film which really
makes good use of it's location and, just like Dog Soldiers, the woodland
setting here is top notch. The eerie silence is golden and a clear sign of their
distance from help and the woodland comes alive with shadows and all sorts of
mirages. Think you see something lurking in the distance? There's a good
possibility that you have.
But come on, it's time to get down to the crunch. All of the quotes on the cover
proclaim it to be brutal, gory, etc. Well it is! Its not as nasty as I was
expecting but there's some great gore including the killer sending his hungry
dogs to dish out their own brand of justice on one of the characters (and
there's not a great deal left to the imagination). There's also a nasty moment
involving a minefield of bear traps into which one unfortunate character falls
into. The booby trap aspect isn't as evident as I was expecting either but you
can see the influence of Saw on modern horror with the harsh tone it
takes towards death. No longer do guys in these films run around killing people
with machetes or axes, it's all about being as creative and as nasty as possible
and showing all of it's glory on the screen.
However whilst the film tries to get creative, it fails to live up to it's
potential. The "hunted becomes the hunter" theme throughout the final third
doesn't sit that well with the rest of the flick and the unveiling of the killer
and his motive isn't really that shocking. You don't need to be Einstein to work
out the whole revenge plot from the start so at least the film spares us the
indignity of pretending to play ignorant with us. The characters, whilst
believable and well-acted, are just a pack of bastards. Kudos to Stephen Wright
who makes his skinhead rebel to be one of the most obnoxious and horrible
characters I've seen for a long while. But when there's no one to root for, who
are we supposed to be gunning for? The hunter who wants revenge for his son
being bullied or the bastards who bullied him? Some of the characters'
transformations when they are forced to get primitive are a bit far-fetched too,
including the main guy who suddenly develops into a better hunter than the
ex-soldier who is killing them!
Verdict
Wilderness shows promise and is certainly a big
step up from Deathwatch for Michael J. Bassett. It's a lot more
involving, very rough and gritty and throws out plenty of gore and brutality for
shock value. Unfortunately we've already been there before and it lacks that
little extra magic that would make you want to watch it again. However if his
next film shows as much improvement on this as this did with Deathwatch,
then I can't wait. |
