Just scanning through IMDB briefly, I saw mentions of this being lousy and references to Eden Lake and Them. OK, I’m sold!
I’m getting comfy. I don’t anticipate writing much. Every time I say that I write 20 paragraphs, but you never know. Well, this opening music is kinda irritating. It’s just instrumental but annoying. Thankfully, this isn’t found footage. Sometimes, you just don’t need a headache from the film. So we have Wit (wife), Mike (husband), Sean (Mike’s bro). They are going camping, in the woods. Sean has a sweet dog. Mike and Wit carve their initials at an abandoned playground with a broken beer bottle. Mike really likes his phone and GPS. I have always wanted to do a film called GPS about…..well it’s scary, and the people keep going in circles basically, and it’s adults, no teens. And here I am, watching a film with adults camps. Damnit Kent, always late to the party. Sean is like the hunter guy, he knows his shit. I wish his name was Shane.
They are looking for deer, she makes too much noise and goes chasing the deer. Seriously, just go running off in the middle of the woods not knowing where you’re going. And then she finds the deer. Of course, she does. She won’t shoot it. But Sean will. Oh, and she’s a vegan. Sean is trying to take her under his wing sorta, showing him about cutting up the deer and shit. This reminds me of a Masters of Horror episode/film called Incident On and Off a Mountain Road, starring Angus Schrimm, the Tall Man from Phantasm. That was a personal favorite. The couple goes swimming, got talking about having kids, and Sean drinks a lot and lives in his car. 20 minutes in and still doing character establishment, and I’m just not gonna bitch. Every time I do, the film proves me to be an idiot. Shiiiit, Sean just said Preservation. That’s the name of the movie!!! Ahhhhh.
Mike’s phone has gone off like 3-4 times already. Obviously, this will play a role later. Sean wants to play Truth or Dare with Wit. There are some noises in the woods freaking out Mike, but it appears that it was the dog. Sean is borderline flirty with Wit. Mike comes back all pissy. Mike and Wit go in the tent, and Sean is just sleeping outside under the tree by the fire. She wakes up, she has a black X on her forehead, and the tent is gone. What the fuck? Mike also has an X on his forehead. Mike is blaming Sean. And Sean shows up, and he has an X. Mike is all pissy towards Sean, accusing him. Sean says that there are 3 sets of tracks. They took everything, guns, knives, and his dog. If she’s gonna be in her panties all film, I’ll be pleased.
Sean gives them directions and Sean wants to track down his dog. Mike is being a dick, still blaming his brother. Mike is now accusing Sean of being flirty with Wit, and Mike goes and wrestles with Sean, and then Wit admits to being pregnant. Good job Mike, you ass clown. Mike is in his boxes and a white T. They must have loved the wardrobe for this film. 35 minutes in, nothing. This is only 97 minutes long including the credits. Well, they found the spray-painted tree, but there are 6 other ones. So they are lost. Haha. Sean is looking for his dog. He hears what sounds like a dog toy and it gets thrown at him. Nobody is visible though. He hears another squeak so he runs towards it. And the toy lands behind him. There’s something dripping on him. His dog was hung above him from a tree. His dog is dead. And now he is getting shot at from a blind, or so he thinks. He quickly makes a makeshift weapon. He sees a body, and he stabs the guy in the calf muscle, steals his gun and beats the fuck outta the dude. The dude rises though and he stabs Sean in the belly. The masked man slightly shoves Sean and he falls from the tree. Bloody hell.
Yup, I wanted him to be the sole survivor, and he still may be. Hahaha, so back to Mike and Wit, she is getting nauseous, so they sit and rest and he sees a bunch of water bottles tied up in a tree. Now I paused it here because this guy is a fucking idiot. Sir, I have zero survival instincts, but I know that has trap written all over it. Let’s see what this moron does at the halfway point. He jumps up and gets one, and then without smelling it or pouring it on his skin, he just starts to pound it. Bravo sir! And then he steps into a big ass bear trap. Hahahaha, justice was served. They find a cabin. The phone is out. They find a walkie talkie. No reception or response. And she just magically found jeans. Fuck this. She is drawing a map on her skin. She wants to take the trails, and he wants her to climb a mountain, leave him behind with his fucked up foot. Suddenly, they hear a phone ring and see a shadow.
Mike has a great game plan. He’s going to go out the front door, distract the guys, while she leaves via the window. He gave her the walkie and a pair of scissors. This guy is not thinking at all. This is a bad idea. Obviously, if these people wanted them dead, they would have done so. So that means you either stay inside until you have a plan or just walk out with your wits about you. Who expects you to just walk outside? Right? Everybody reading this right now has made up their mind that they do not want to be stuck in a life or death situation with me. Trust me, it will be fine.
Mike walks out and finds Sean’s dog tags on the cardboard bear cut out. Well, he sees one of the guys, and they give him a warning shot. She is hauling ass. Mike ends up in a porta-potty. He sees a guy approach. Ge breaks off a pipe inside, and then he looks, and he doesn’t see the guy. Suddenly a blade starts piercing the inside. Yeah, you escaped the cabin to end up in an even smaller compact area? Come the fuck on!!! Are you shitting on my balls right now? OK, I had to pause it. So Mike, while avoiding the knife, props open the top, throws himself off, and the masked man doesn’t notice this and is still pounding on the doors. Seriously? I’m deducting a point. Mike attacks the guy, they wrestle in the portapotty and Mike has the upper hand, wounded and all, he has the upper hand. Come on. He now has the guy’s walkie and his gun. I watch lots of wrestling and horror, and I’m having a hard time with my suspension of disbelief right now. Somebody else pulls a gone on him, and we see Wit and hear a gunshot. Eh, that was a clever cut.
She is now scaling this mountain. I couldn’t have done what she just accomplished. She reaches the top of the cliff. She radios for Mike. On the radio, he asks if she remembers their wedding day. He tells her how beautiful she looked. He says “They are gonna find you and they are going to kill you unless you kill them first.” We see that there is blood leaking out along his left rib cage. He appears to be upside down. He’s having a rough day. He is starting to pass out. We see that he is in a dumpster with his brother. The 3 guys film him and then close the lid. The 3 guys are on bikes and hunting her down while she sings to Mike. They see her, she sees them. She realizes that she has been tracked via Mike’s cell phone and earlier tracking bullshit. SO now she runs, and I reiterate, they are on bikes. She trips on a rock, bangs her dome. She is fucked up now. That was probably a concussion.
These 3 guys are kind of a joke. They are searching for her, and he hid in a nasty ass culvert. Smart at least. I think somebody like Maria Bello did that in a Stephen King movie on Lifetime before. See, if she didn’t have jeans, these shots from behind may be nice. Oh well. She crawls to the other end. This is close to where they began because Sean played with his dog. Yup, there’s the vehicle. She breaks in. Mike, told her how to start it up without keys. I’d be so fucking clueless. Red and brown wire I think he said. Haha, not working. She pops the hood, and they spray painted the smiley face to let her know. Bitch, time to go in like High Tension mode. OK, she had a candy bar, some water, a bunch of razors. She is using floss to stitch her head wound. A tire iron, some road flares, and some other shit, and she is ready to ruck fools. One of the 3 hunters has asthma. One of them is playing some bullshit mobile shooting game. These are teenage boys. They are texting one another, that they need to go home or else they’ll be in big trouble, the other insists that they need to find her. The insistent one grabs the asthmatic one and starts to hold his face underwater a few times to prove his point. Younger brother perhaps?
Then a flare goes off and gets their attention. She has led a path for them to take. The group is divided, she nails one with the tire iron. She decides to show mercy, so he pulls a gun and she thwacks him in the face and kills him presumably. Well, now she has his sweet gun with a sweet scope. The next guy shows up to a museum, and music is playing and he sees a mask hanging, his buddy’s mask. There are like silly voiceovers for kids. This is funny. It is playing this cheesy America The Beautiful but it sounds like circus music. I am digging this. This dumbass is just wandering. He doesn’t know what he is doing. This is asthma boy. And gun up to back of his head as he sits down to text. Hahaha. Texting will get you every time. So he does the quick spin, knocks gun to the side and sprays her in the face with battery acid, I mean his inhaler. I hope somebody got that reference. It’s from Stephen King’s IT. I don’t think they ever show an inhaler in a movie unless it will be used later on as well. They both have their guns drawn, and from outside, we hear a shot. She comes walking out. He didn’t do too well. And now she has the cell phone. TEC9 texts back asking where he is. Brilliant. She was going to call 911, but eh, this is more fun.
Back at the spray-painted tree, she decides to fuck with our last guy. She is hanging from a tree, upside down, and uses jumper cables to strangle him. But he breaks free. He gets up and smashes her in the face before she can fire on him. He has her hogtied up and attached to the back of his bike. He drags her somewhere and wakes her up with water. She is tied down to a picnic table. He found the 2 masks of his fallen comrades. Is he gonna light her on fire? He’s got a knife. Time to fuck with her first. He goes for her belly, you know, he being pregnant and all. Suddenly, his mom calls him. This provides a distraction for Wit to cut herself free. And like that, she’s gone. Hey, back to the playground. She is hiding under the merry go round. She got up, into a tube, and he is firing at her. He’s got her and using a chain to strangle her. She is close to passing out. She’s having flashbacks of Mike’s dumbass. She sees their initials carved. She reaches for the broken beer bottle that Mike left, and she stabs this kid in the neck. Yup, that killed him. She takes the bike and peddles her ass along a road while we hear her sing The Bear Went Over the Mountain, which we have now heard 3 times now.
She makes it to a supermarket parking lot, She looks like hell. There’s a kid with a toy gun, he fires at her and she finger guns him down.
End film.
Uhm, no twists at any point. Nothing really original here. It wasn’t bad, but there’s nothing that this film does that I haven’t seen done better by a different film. This is the epitome of average. It’s not bad, it is fairly easy to watch. It’s incredibly straight forward. I guess, sometimes you want something creative in the end, but this….just didn’t bring it. I feel extremely underwhelmed. Eden Lake, Them, the Strangers, You’re Next and others all worked much better for me. I like feeling fulfilled at the end of the movie. I feel like I just had a light snack, and I want the main course now. For better or worse, the aforementioned films all were main course type films. I doubt I will watch this again unless I’m with a girl that just can’t handle anything too hardcore, then perhaps. I give this a 5.0 because it was right in the middle.
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