Director: Michael PenningRating: 2/5
Okay, I'm going to have to give you a pretty good bit of the story for you to learn how this movie fails on so many levels. There may be some spoilers, but I won't reveal the ending, mostly because I didn't understand it. Here we go. Way back in the olden days, a girl named Isabella apparently went crazy and ended up hanging herself. Her house burned to the ground, and it is now a bit of ruins in the middle of the forest. In the present day, a group of youngsters - Kayla, Jessie, Dean, and Toby - decide to go fishing. Toby gets a fish-hook stuck in his hand, so they have to return to Kayla and Jesse's childhood cabin. They take a route that none of them are familiar with (fuck up #1), and they come across the ruins of Isabella's house. Kayla feels someone scratching her, but there's no one scratching her. Jessie decides to do a rubbing of some old sign that, we later learn, says "where is my soul?" The others don't want to wait for her, so they go on without her, leaving her alone in an unfamiliar part of the woods (fuck up #2). The other three return to the cabin, wait for a little bit, and then decide to go looking for Jessie. They get into the car, only to discover that they have no keys. Meanwhile, there's a giant hillbilly lurking on the property, and they become afraid for their lives. They leave the car and return to the cabin, and Jessie magically reappears.
Jessie has scratches all over her, like she was attacked by a bear. She is delirious, apparently having gone batshit crazy. She hacks Toby up before slitting her own throat. Kayla and Dean then decide that, maybe, they should try to get out of there. But, unfortunately, their car has disappeared - everything except the engine, it seems (wtf?) So they figure they'll just walk - back into town, through woods that are pitch black. Before they can get anywhere, though, a chainsaw falls on Dean's leg and renders him completely immobile (can anyone say "pussy"?) So Kayla runs on by herself, and encounters aforementioned giant hillbilly and some chick with no eyes. They decide to leave her alone, but she still thinks it best to hide - in some kind of small water that is shortly and inexplicably filled with water. Instead of drowning like any normal person, she emerges unscathed into what appears to be a lake (wtf?) I found myself wondering why she was running through the woods when, the whole time, she knew she could teleport. Kayla finds herself in the Isabella's ruins once again, and some weird shit happens. Not weird as in, "Oh that's cool." Weird as in, "What the fuck is happening?"
I didn't understand a bit of it. I was actually enjoying this movie up until about fifteen minutes before it ended. That's when it got stupid and confusing. I think Isabella's ghost was haunting the ruins, though I'm not sure why. I don't know how the hillbilly had anything to do with her, nor the no-eyed chick. I don't know why these four kids were so incredibly dumb, why Jessie went crazy and killed her friend, or just...why? Nothing was explained fully. The story actually started off pretty interesting, and it could have gone places. It had the potential to be at least somewhat good. Instead, it confused the shit out of me. The acting wasn't all that bad, and it did have a few jump-scares, but the complete lack of story development makes this movie a waste of time.
The no-eyed chick is Isabella's ghost. I think the giant hillbilly is meant to be the ghost of Isabella's husband, Thomas. The forest ranger and the sociologist who discuss the legend mention that the husband removed the eyes and hung his wife. (This is different from what the movie showed where Isabella was possessed in the opening sequence. They were going off historical records or legends or whatever.)
ReplyDeleteThe 4 kids deaths are, I think, meant to be parallels for the 4 workers in the 1920's who tried to scavenge material. Like the 4 kids, the workers all died but only 1 body was found.
Jessie attacked her friend because she was possessed, it's possible the ghosts entered her when she made the rubbing off the tree.
It's one of those "dead all along" horror movies. The main story is about the 4 teenagers in the woods, but we are first introduced to the ranger and the specialist studying the area. At the end we learn that they were studying the area because people died there. They reach the conclusion that Kayla (blonde girl) killed her friends, set the cabin on fire, then killed herself because that was what the trace evidence suggested. Viewers know that supernatural forces led to their deaths. Seeing the portrait of Isabella found near Kayla's body is meant to hammer that point home.