If you enjoy your horror films clever, bloody and, well, horrifying, then you’ll have to wait for yet another take on The Exorcist or The Omen. If, on the other hand, you like them stupid, muddy and unintentionally funny, then you’ll love The Woods.
The plot seems within the realm of plausibility, which is, after all, what makes scary movies scary: they play on our own real life fears. At the all-girls school (already, you’d think that’d be freaky enough) of Falburn Academy, Heather (Agnes Bruckner) finds herself at the center of mysterious happenings. Between the time she arrives and the time she figures out how to not-so-magically balance a pile of rocks, Agnes becomes the object of ridicule for her fellow students and the object of obsession for her headmistress, Ms. Traverse (Patricia Clarkson in an inexplicably poor performance). Somehow, the woods surrounding the school are the key to whatever unexplained happenings conspire at Falburn, which include laughably bad CGI vines and other ground coverings un-mysteriously reaching through open windows and into the girls sleeping quarters.
Director Lucky McKee makes use of all the traditional slasher flick techniques, from a recurring sinister theme tune to fade-ins and outs to unseen whispers and screams, but none of that is particularly frightening without a steadfast plot—and The Woods just doesn’t have one. Instead, it borrows bits and pieces from those that came before it. It attempts to capitalize on the infinite creepiness of high school politics a la Carrie, but falls flat with contrived catfights. And, like the remake of The Wicker Man (which no doubt made it to theaters only because Nicholas Cage’s selling power is superior to Clarkson’s), The Woods depends too strongly on the premise of an innocent stumbling upon an isolated and forgotten world populated by creepy locals. While this concept can be quite unnerving if done well, as in films like The Stepford Wives (the original, of course) and even Wrong Turn, it quickly devolves into comedy when the forgotten world consists of poisoned milk and suicidal children of the corn asserting in barritone voices, “this is my bed.”
Beyond being derivative, The Woods is absolutely incomprehensible. What strives to terrify via a secret, haunting past (and let’s not forget the mildly unsettling mud vomit) winds up being a mashup of Mean Girls meets Revenge of the Nerds set in the after, after, aftermath (try 1965) of the Salem Witch Trials. In short, there’s a reason The Woods went straight to DVD … so you can heckle it in the comfort of your own home.
