Simply Perfect

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Matt is haunted by the death of a girl from a car accident he caused years ago. Matt was drunk and as he reached for the car radio, he struck the girl as she crossed the road. The guilt that he feels has altered his sense of reality, making Matt's life a mystery full of shadows and phantoms. Now, years later Matt goes away for weekend with his new girlfriend Dawn. After a wild session of lovemaking, Dawn goes for a walk. While she is away a strange man with an ax comes into the motel room and attacks Matt. After that incident Matt goes into the woods, looking for Dawn. There he encounters Dawn's family who tie him down and put him on trail for the murder of the girl years before. They find him guilty and he is sent back into the forest to be hunted down by the family. The deeper Matt runs into the forest the farther his mind is lost to the Blackwoods.Opie's brother is in this. That says it all.

On a road-trip to meet her family, a couple get sidetracked by the residents of a small-town community who are seemingly trying to kill him, but as he spends more time in the area, he begins to see the real reason behind their actions and tries to stop them before he comes to any harm.There's a lot to dislike here as this was a really flawed entry. One of the biggest is that it's built around one of the most insipid and utterly moronic twists in the genre (it's not the worst, but man is it up there) that basically makes the entire film completely worthless, and when combined with an irritating belief that every single action scene must be shot in slow-motion combined with a camera angle that is so blurred and out-of-focus it's still impossible to tell what's going on. There's almost no gore or even kills happening on-screen and that it's more of a mystery than anything makes it nearly impossible to get into this one and really care since nothing happens. It's got his usual flare for gorgeous scenery, but that's about it here beyond the final chase through the woods which has a rather nice amount of action to it, but it's still too little too late to save this.Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and Brief Nudity

A while back I read an interview with Uwe Boll saying how his early non-video-game-adaptation movies are better and people should watch them as well before judging him. I've done both, and I have to say Uwe Boll makes no bad calls any other straight-to-video filmmaker wouldn't either, he's just much more high-profile thanks to his video-game franchise licenses. He isn't a bad director, but he's not one of the best either. Blackwoods is a case in point. It's an entertaining, solid movie, but it has problems, namely confusing writing and an end that comes suddenly and explains everything in five minutes flat.Blackwoods constantly refers via flashback to a horrible car crash that the main character has before the start of the movie, where a woman is accidentally killed. It constantly drops hints that 'sumthin' ain't right' with the main guy Matt, but doesn't really have any exposition till the closing minutes. While this keeps the pace brisk, it does mean that you feel a little left out of proceedings.Also, the cast lay their 'you ain't from around here is ya boy' routine on a little thick. If Clint Howard had acted any stranger I would have started to expect Jeremy Beadle to hop out from behind a TV set during the motel segment. Given that Boll actually does a good job of developing an uneasy atmosphere for the movie, it seems unfortunate that he also got his actors to really turn up the 'weird dudes' knob. It kind of cheapens the effective direction a little.Still, despite it being quite confusing at times, and having some fairly odd, unnecessarily nuanced acting (not bad, just really strange), Blackwoods is an entertaining film. The storyline is intriguing, and the way it's fed to you is quite gripping. Unlike Boll's House of the Dead, his other film I've seen, which is non-stop stupidity (though I hasten to add, that's good stupid not bad stupid), Blackwoods is quite intelligent and well put together. It's worth a shot, don't expect a miracle, but give it a try, you could enjoy it a lot.

Neat psychological thriller about a man who has a guilty past that just won't go away.Matt, Patrick Muldoon, goes on a trip to the country with his girlfriend, Dawn, Keeger Tracy, to meet her parents and realizes that the place where they live is where he killed a girl in a car accident some time ago. Matt starts to relive that event over and over until it drives him out of his mind. Good use of scenery and even better use of plot and actors by director Vwe Boll of how the minds subconscious is able to bring back events that we would like to forget. Released for video but as good as most films that have theatrical runs, with good supporting efforts by Michael Pare, Samantha Farris and of course Clint Howard as the off the wall motel clerk. The movie ends a bit confusingly but if you use your freeze or slo-mo button, of your DVD or video player, you'll see what really happened to Matt. Terrific use of and manipulating the scenes by directer Boll in which Matt is in flashback and how those scenes mesh together in the end is what makes this made for video movie as good, or even better then most psychological thrillers that you would pay as much as ten dollars to see in the movie houses.