A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Four wide-eyed girls bid farewell to their parents as they embark on a trip together, promising to be good. As soon as their parents are out of sight however, rock music hi-jacks the soundtrack, off come most of the clothes, their walk turns to a swagger: instant transformation! They're not such good girls after all.They have names, but that's all that separates them. This important character-establishing time is taken with sardonic asides and pouting. When a lot of attention is devoted to ramifications of the inevitable 'I have to go pee' line, you know development is hardly at the forefront of the minds of those who filled their time writing this.Technically, the blurring and cutting off of voices and soundtrack are so glaring, they appear to be an artistic decision. In no time at all, their stay at a cabin in the woods has become a series of grunts, modulated and looped shrieks, incomprehensible and occasionally creepy images and repeated scenes, often too dark to make out. The girls, in their tiny shorts, react and become more entwined with the growing evil.This is nearly an interesting exercise in nightmare – in the kind of delirious, unnerving crash-chaos and gory hellish manner as practiced by 'Evil Dead (1981)' or 'The Grudge (2002)'. Although the tumbling into spiralling horror is frightening in its turgid confusion, and indeed tries to emulate effects on moments from the afore-mentioned films, sadly, it succeeds mainly in testing the patience.I think the problem – and I do salute director and writer Michael and Gerald Crum for attempting an ongoing fevered nightmare that defies structure – is that there is no middle ground. One minute, we are in the bland land of badly-defined sexualised teen-girls rebelling – the next, and with no preparation, we are given all-encompassing noises and images and incoherence only to be found in the depth of nightmare. What characters there were become garbled mannequins, their unfathomable plight only scattered with occasional meaningless dialogue. The ending, when it comes, happens mid-sentence. Perhaps a little less trying to be weird and a little more help for the audience to know what it is supposed to be afraid of would help 'Cypress Lake' communicate the scares it batters us over the head with, with more success.

'Lake Fear' or 'Cypress Lake' or 'A Haunting At Cypress Creek' as my DVD cover called it is the story of four girls wearing short shorts who go out to a remote cabin and things start to happen. By the end of the film one wonders, what did happen? What was that all about? Once inside the house there is a relentless barrage of choppy editing, useless acting, shots in focus, shots out of focus (this becomes terribly irritating) and some unconvincing gore towards the end to try and breathe life into a long expired movie. Acting-wise it was amateur, particularly when the girls were in their bloody make-up so you couldn't even tell them apart. The music score is hilariously bad and the director had obviously plundered his DVD collection for lots of the imagery. The sound effects weren't awful, mainly in the beginning, so compliments for that. Otherwise a tangled mess with no rhyme or reason.Sad Cypress indeed.

What can I say about this movie...well....not much,it really was awful.I don't believe it was bad acting that let the movie down,more a case of the movie letting the actors down. The effects were awful,the sound was horrendous,the music was worse,and the editing was the absolute worst I've ever seen,and I've seen some pretty awful movies,lets just say that Syfy channel movies and Asylum movies are a huge step up compared to this offering. The one redeeming part of this movie was the presence of the beautiful Taylor LeeAnn Graham (and I'm not into rangers),who was completely wasted talent in this crapfest.To sum it all up,stay a long,long,long way away from this rubbish,you've been warned.

A rating of 5,5?! Really?!? I'm usually not someone to use big words and I like to look for the teeniest positive thing in every movie, however bad they may be, but here I stand with my back to a concrete wall: this is by far the worst attempt to a horror movie that I have seen so far!! Where to begin? The plot is non-existent, the direction (if any) is beyond amateurish, as is the photography. The sound is terrible, the voices sound sometimes loud and echoing, sometimes muffled or like someone speaks from under water. The editing is lame, many takes where nothing happens (someone walking through a room for instance) are prolonged too the extreme. There is no acting at all, it's like the maker (I won't give him the credit of calling him director) asked some friends to walk and talk before his camera just for the fun of it (well, definitely not OUR fun!). The camera by the way is never stable, every image trembles and tilts, as if they didn't have money for a decent trolley or even a tripod. And the special effects and scares? None whatsoever. They try to create a sort of The Ring atmosphere, with flashy images of supposed ghostlike persons, but you just watch it in bored disbelief in stead of fright. And what the hell was supposed to be going on there?! Never any explanation. It stays as mysteriously as why these girls went to the house anyway. In short: total waste of our time and of their budget of 8000 dollar, as IMDb pointed out. For a movie it's nothing, I know, but still 8000 dollars too much.