Dead Wood

DEAD WOOD is a terrible indie horror flick from Britain. It apparently took four years to get made and you can see why. As usual, a bunch of campers head off into the woods where they discover a mysterious girl before being stalked by persons unknown. This plays out as a slow moving drama with virtually no horror content whatsoever. There's no sense of menace here, just tedium with extraneous chit chat and dragged-out plotting.

Heading out into the woods on a camping trip, a group of friends stumble upon a young woman looking for her boyfriend and agree to help her only to stumble into a far more dangerous situation than they ever realized. This here is truly one of the worst, most wretched straight-up horror films in the genre. The fact that this one is so amateurish and hardly ever displays any kind of professional approach and feel is one of the biggest deciding factors about this one's lousiness, as the low-budget feel to the special effects and the visuals about this one are clearly evident quite early and often throughout here. This goes to really hammer home how utterly abysmal this is during the few moments where it's actually worth watching by showing how low the budget of this is since the other rather troubling aspect of this one is the fact that it's just so dull and boring that what does happen here is barely worth caring about. The first near-hour of this one is spent with these completely unappealing people who just sort of aimlessly wander around the woods just not doing anything that makes us care about either couple here. Not only are they blatantly stupid about splitting up away from each other when they have incredibly accurate evidence of something out in the woods with them, there's also other such scenes as the women letting their boyfriends go skinny-dipping with another naked woman they just met earlier in the day, ignoring all signs of danger to hide out in the creatures' lair as well as knowingly throw themselves at someone when they're in the situation with a shapeshifter, and that's just the start of it all in here. The characters in here are just plain stupid and they're not in the slightest bit interesting, so placing them in a situation where nothing happens and when it does there's just no professional appearance to it all really works against this one. A few encounters are quite interesting, as the struggle to dodge the creature in the woods trailing after them as well as the drowning sequence in the lake while the centerpiece visual effect of a man being turned into a tree does have a rather chilling air to them in theory which seem like something that really could've been used as the basis for a much better effort than this one is for that's about all that this one has going for it. Rated R: Graphic Language, Nudity, Violence and a mild sex scene.

I thought this movie was going to be something really scary to watch. The beginning of the movie will lead you to believe it's a truly good horror film. But as the scenes kept progressing and the actors kept getting worse and worse, I knew I didn't have to hide my eyes anymore. I could of done something better with my time,like sit and look at the wall. That would of been more exciting than this film that was that was so wrongly labeled a "horror film." It leads me to wonder where they found these actors. There is absolutely no emotion shown on their faces. Very wooden acting. Please don't waste your money renting this movie. If you want to see it,wait till it comes to television. If it ever does. Instead of it being touted on the horror film channels,it should be on "worst movie ever made!"

This movie suffers from bad acting, bad directing and bad storytelling. The moments of suspense are so scarce that when they come, you know where and when you'll be supposed to be scared. Apart from the lack of the above, the only scary thing in this movie is the knowledge that you are wasting precious time of your life which comes to you with each second you watch of this abominable "movie". It are movies, such as these, that give the horror genre the bad name which it has today. I suppose it is the only genre that's being used as a training ground for bad and/or beginning directors and actors. Stay way from this and don't even touch it with a 10-foot pole. You've been warned.

synopsis: a group of friends go to the forest to camp and are preyed upon by an evil force born from the forest. well it does what it says on the tin. if you watch this expecting a classic then you have the wrong mindset for it. this was never meant to be a classic, this was never meant to be the godfather, just a fun little trip for the viewers. the scripting, dialogue and acting aren't very good at all but it can all be taken in fun as the film expands it's throwaway characters and the one's we're supposed to care about. this isn't done well but somehow i couldn't help but care what happened to them. the camera-work is basic at best with the director assuming a half 'last house on the left' gritty realism and half 'the Blair with project' uber realism feel. it works in places and falls short at others. saying that, it doesn't detract from the basic experience of the film. no arty, film school camera tricks here. i read in fangoria that the film was shot on 35mm and considering, it's a good transfer. colours are bright and there are only a small selection of blurry frames. the transfer is quite pleasing to the eye with a wealth of colour and brightness to feast your eyes on. i do recommend turning both the colour and brightness on your TV down to enjoy the supple tones of the transfer. the score is typically suspenseful and if i am honest quite typical of a genre film. it didn't really do much for me at all. good composure but ultimately too formulaic to bring tension. this is the kind of film which you should go into expecting nothing more than cheap thrills. if you are looking for more then i could recommend a lot of films but if you just want to watch a horror film which provides the basic needs of a horror fan then go for this. you won't remember it and you won't talk about it but in my opinion it's not a waste of 90 minutes so much as a giving away.

Group of people go camping. They get lost, hit a deer and end up more lost. The run into a girl looking for her boyfriend who's missing, and who we saw in the opening minutes come on (where a several foot high drop to a stream became a several story drop to a stream depending upon which shot you see. The film is full of mismatched shot like that). We eventually find out that the girl is possessed by some forest spirit who kills them...and loggers who show up in the coda for transgressing into the sacred wood, or some similar nonsense. Its not really worth going into, trust me. Somewhere down the road you'll that me that you've just saved 80 minutes of your life by not seeing the film and reading this review instead.

This has got to be one of the most boring horror movie I have ever seen. Do not trust any positive reviews for this piece of crap, they either was part of making this atrocious film, was payed off(which I doubt, knowing how this was made in less than a shoe string budget), don't know what a good horror film is suppose to be and being a nuthugger cause it's a British horror flick. Just about everything about this film is so boring to the point, nothing is original, nothing is unexpected, and nothing is scary. I decided to pick this film up after seeing how it was featured in bunch of festivals that probably takes any movie no matter how bad it is. I honestly don't know how anyone can find this terrible movie overall to be even remotely entertaining. Just pass on this one, you will be doing yourself a favor, it's not only a bad horror movie, it's a pointless one with events that lead to more pointless crap. The characters in this is not only stupid, but they are so awkward they don't seem like real people what so ever, so you just don't care if they die what so ever as well. I know everyone is entitled to there own opinions, but most of the reviewers that give this movie a positive review, either was involved with this movie or involved with the people that was involved with this crap. Either that or they are tree huggers, cause the plot is about some wood witch that turns people into trees for not respecting nature or something along those line. I give it a .5 cause the ending was pretty bad to the point it's sort of funny, and it's 1.5 by me cause there is no zero to give it. 1.5/10

OK, obviously the previous comments have been written by crew or cast of the movie, they are pretty much exactly the same and they would be the ONLY people to find this load of crap entertaining! Firstly, yes this IS yet another run of the mill teen slasher/lost in the woods with no mobile phone signal piece of garbage! Secondly, there is NOTHING good to say about this movie! The acting was absolutely diabolical, I've seen better acting at a kids nativity play! And the script (if there actually was one) was just beyond belief! The previous comments say something about being scary and funny with great visual effects and music, well sorry but you have to be kidding! They also mention that there are great and sensual sex scenes! What???? The sex scenes are like something from a REALLY bad * movie! I am angry that I wasted 90 minutes of my life on this monstrosity of a movie! 1/10 and I'm only giving 1 because zero wasn't available! NOT SCARY! NOT FUNNY AND NOT GOOD!

Kim Newman recommended this in the last issue of Empire. He also recommended 100 Feet so the less said about that man the better. This has precisely two moments where the director actually achieves some semblance of 'horror' and one moment where he clearly blew the budget on one special effect. These three scenes collectively last for about ten minutes of screen time and whilst some understanding of how to frighten the viewer is present they are not worth watching the film for. For the rest of the time you are left with a meandering plot that truly contains some of the worst acting I've ever witnessed and that's coming from a fan of low budget horror/indie/B-Movies for 20 years. The quality of these performances are akin to watching a play performed by an below average GCSE drama group. The acting and dialogue are so poor in fact that I wondered if it was intentional. Sadly the film has a disturbing lack of awareness and is seemingly not tongue-in-cheek in its approach. This is the first review I've ever written but it's all come to head lately as I drift from one disappointing new horror film to the next mainly due to the untrustworthy or shilling production company reviews from the IMDb user comments. It's a joke honestly. As Macready says 'Trust is hard thing to come by these days'

Saw this at Phantasmagoria. It's an ultra-low budget British horror film about a group of young campers who get lost in the woods but thankfully don't get picked off by a man in a mask. Instead what starts out as a fairly standard slasher setup turns into a creepy and rather effective supernatural horror film. It's actually pretty scary in places too! The excellent writing and fantastic actors help a lot too as you really get to know and like the characters before they get into the story. But the real surprises in this film are the mind-blowing special effects used sparingly for maximum effect. The film is a real achievement and definitely one for horror fans to look out for.