Boring

A Masterpiece!

The first must-see film of the year.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

If you have the patience to watch The Woods then there is a lot to gain. This is not your usual witch affair and contains slow boiling intrigue and great storytelling. The pace is a bit too slow and there is too much emphasis on thriller rather than suspense for my taste. Still a very good psychological film for the patient among us.

'The woods' harbours plenty of clichés, that is undeniable, but that's not all - at all. Director Lucky McKee has a fine sense of style and the cinematography is more than decent. And there are plenty of developments in the story to keep the viewers on or at least near the edge of their seats. It takes a good while then, but the finale is pretty good, even if the mystery genre dominates the horror genre.Agnes Bruckner delivers a fine performance as well, there are some pretty neat special effects, but the two predecessors are still better than this one. I haven't mentioned the role of horror icon Bruce Campbell yet, but that's merely because it's rather small.A big 6 out of 10 for 'The woods', which equals 7 out of 10 here. It's been a while since I saw this one, so a fresh viewing is in order (which goes for all of McKee's work, actually - come to think of it, I should try 'Roman' by Angela Bettis again soon, too).

Made under the watch of MGM and then MGM was purchased by Sony, The Woods fell into the hands of a studio who could care less about the thing. After being re-edited and having release dates pushed back again and again, The Woods was unceremoniously dumped straight to video and with the final twist of the knife, Sony removed all special features from the DVD and released it bare bones. The Woods deserved a better fate and while there are some issues throughout, the film has a remarkable atmosphere, the cast is uniformly good and the cinematography and art direction is quite nice. The ending is not so much botched as it seems a bit rushed and incoherent, especially considering the slow burn pace of the rest of the film. Agnes Bruckner wisely underplays her role as a semi-disturbed girl sent to a boarding school, where the school is a coven of witches. There are a few jarring shots of a girl screaming at the camera at the end of a dream sequence which are not only out of place, but a down right embarrassment of editing and failed scares. That aside, the film has a dreamy, hallucinatory feel which is a bit disconnected, but overall the film has many qualities worth seeking out.

It's one of those hard movies to rate: it has some suspenseful moments but doesn't satisfy.The lack of originality in this movie is absurd: it's a mix between "The Village", "Blair Witch Project" and "Dead End". Why choosing the character's name as Heather since it's the same name as "BWP" main actress? Also, the background sound sounded like a mermaid, not a witch. The good part of this film is that we never know who are the real witches and why they're doing this. Also we don't know if Heather and Marcy are having an affair, which is interesting for a mysterious movie. But the plot had to be more original and less repetitive to make me not roll my eyes for a dozen times.