Thanks for the memories!

Don't Believe the Hype

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Atmospheric non-thriller. It has a strong cast but the script seems uncertain of what it wants to be and it requires a strong suspension of disbelief. One must believe that men will resort to rape and murder with little provocation and that women will cower and cringe in all situations. I won't even go into the litany of other trite stereotypes but will summarize by saying that there are no surprises in the movie.It's sad to see such a waste of potential here as the film could have been so much better if it had been willing to go in a new direction at any point, instead of strictly rehashing the well-worn back roads in these backwoods. Ah, well...

Sometime in the 1970s, two Englishmen and their Spanish wives hope to overcome the difficulties in their relationships with a vacation at a family home in rural Basque country. When the guys go hunting and rescue a young girl held captive in an abandoned farmhouse, it's only a matter of time before the locals come looking for her. 'Bosque de Sombras' clearly takes Peckinpah's 'Straw Dogs' as its model, exploring the same themes of power and masculinity through a sexually provocative wife and her weak and ineffectual husband. Only the psycho-sexual dynamic is played out against the unspoken backdrop of Franco's dictatorship instead of the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, these socio-political underpinnings, which made Peckinpah's 1971 classic so powerful, are lost in 'Bosque de Sombras' not only through the lack of any real sense of the era but a reluctance to define the characters in the broad strokes necessary for political commentary. Even the attempt itself begs the question: just how relevant is a critique of the insular superstitions of Franco's Spain? So we're left with a pretty routine genre thriller of backwoods crazies running amok. The cast and crew do an excellent job (particularly the always brilliant Oldman), the forest locations are beautifully ripe and foreboding, and the movie is suspenseful and thoroughly entertaining, but any attempts to achieve something greater are ultimately held back by a screenplay that dares not deliver on its thematic philosophy.

I'm seriously confused about how to properly write a critique on "The Backwoods" without being either overly negative or positive, but nevertheless express my respect to the cast and crew for the film they intended to make. This is a genuine throwback to the era of 70's exploitation film-making, with a truly grim atmosphere and uncompromising violence, but at the same time it's completely unoriginal and derivative. I've read an extended interview with writer/director Koldo Serra, in which he declares that he doesn't understand why so many horror movies are being remade nowadays even though the originals aren't open for any kind of improvement. That might very well be true, and Lord knows I wholeheartedly agree with such a statement, but Serra goes so far in 'bringing homage' to the original classics that he practically copies them as well. "The Backwoods" isn't a remake of any existing 70's flick, but it easily could have been, since it bluntly borrows elements from "Deliverance", "Straw Dogs" and "The Wild Bunch". Cleverly set in the year 1978, so that the script at least didn't had to take into account malfunctioning mobile phones and navigation systems losing their signal, "The Backwoods" revolves on two couples spending a little vacation deep in nearly impenetrable woods of the Spanish Basque region. Paul, the oldest and wisest of the four, bought the old house of his grandmother there and wants to show the beautiful region to his wife and friends. After some very unfriendly welcoming vibes in the local bar already, the quartet faces the ultimate confrontation with the primitive backwoods community when Paul and Norman discover a neglected young girl chained up in a hidden cabin. The girl is the outgrowth of a humiliating family scandal, and the local patriarch Paco so desperately want to keep her existence secret that he mobilizes the rest of the locals for an old-fashioned manhunt. "The Backwoods" is an uneven mishmash of a film in which downright powerful sequences are altered with dreadful clichés and predictable plot twists. The gritty and relentless atmosphere of 70's survival flicks is marvelously re-created, but the script doesn't have the courage to genuinely shock the audience with twisted little details or perverted undertones like they did in the old days. The filming locations are stupendous and the producers managed to attract a fantastic cast (including the brilliant Gary Oldman and Virginie Ledoyen). It's really a shame this film doesn't feature anything truly unique, because I really wanted to like and recommend it.

Oh say it ain't so, Gary Oldman! Having been a fairly big fan of Mr. Oldman (even having enjoyed his performance as Zorg in THE FIFTH ELEMENT), I've come to expect a certain level of entertainment from his film choices. Not so here.Gary Oldman (HARRY POTTER films) stars as Paul, an Englishman on holiday in Spain's backwoods with his wife and another couple when they run afoul of the locals who are hiding a young girl away in what seems to be sickening conditions (they find her tied by the ankle in a dilapidated home drinking from a dog bowl). "Saving" the girl, they bring her back to their distant cabin and learn that some yocal-locals are looking for her ...and their carrying rifles.Hiding her away, the English vacationers quickly learn that the nearby township will do whatever necessary to retrieve her ...including raping or shooting anyone who gets in their way.Probably the biggest issue with this film is that it has no purpose, and flings about in uncertainty up to and beyond its horrible ending. It is never explained why the girl is tied up in the first place (she does act like an animal and the audience is left wondering if she were some sort of mentally handicapped kid or a hybrid human-canine, or even a werewolf ...but none of these are ever explored in any depth).The acting is so over-the-top that I often wondered if the scenes were supposed to be taken seriously or were designed for laughs.Regardless as to intentions, THE BACKWOODS should remain on the extreme "back shelf" of all DVD rental stores ...if stocked at all!