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    Dark Forest

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    “Dark Forest” is a low budget, locally made film from my home province of Manitoba that’s gotten a theatrical release so the odds are it isn’t coming to your theatre, but if it is, I bet you’re wondering if it’s worth supporting the little guy. The plot concerns a group of friends (Veronica Temopolski, Laurel McArthur, Alyssa Wyspianski and Weornika Sokalska) who go on a camping trip in the woods. Unfortunately for them, Michelle (Ternopolski) is leaving behind her abusive boyfriend Peter (Dennis Scullard) who decides to follow them into the woods and go on a killing spree.

    This is a low, looow budget movie and I knew that going in. I wasn’t expecting crane shots or awesome special effects or even spectacular acting. This is humble beginnings for everyone involved and I have to say that for the most part it’s alright, but the script and the plot are so bad you’ll wonder if the people who approved the film for a release in Landmark Cinemas didn’t just get out of a dentist appointment that required some heavy painkillers. If you’re going to make a movie and release it, even to a limited audience, can’t you at least come up with a story that’s worth telling? The plot here is a generic, cookie-cutter, paint-by-the-numbers, connect-the-dots slasher movie. It has all of the clichés, and all of the pitfalls you would find in a knockoff of a knockoff of an imitator of “Halloween”. And I do mean ALL OF THEM. We have characters isolated in the woods, at least 6 scenes that firmly establish that they don’t have cellphone reception, people getting separated so they can be picked off one by one, scenes where the heroines knock the killer down and forget to double tap, off-screen characters that are invisible until they jump into frame, people who can’t hear blood curdling screams because they’re not in the frame and so on. Everyone in this story must have survived an incident that involved a spear flying through their head because they’re the most lame-brained people you’ve ever seen. Combine that with their lack of peripheral vision and they’re simply ill suited for survival.

    Once again, I know that this is a low-budget film, probably the first movie that producer/writer/director/cameraman Roger Boyer has ever shown to anyone but his film class, but come on. You don’t need to have a degree in psychology to know that if a woman is in the woods camping with her four friends and two of them disappear during the night and then her boyfriend wanders off into the woods to take a piss, never to be seen again, she’s not going to be sitting in her chair annoyed. Any real human being would be freaking out or at least worried.

    Not only do is this plot populated endless morons, introduced solely to be murdered, but they all talk in awkward, stilted dialogue. That’s how you know that the actresses involved are at least semi talented because they are able to deliver with a straight face these terrible jokes and the dialogue which is often simply just “%$&@ you! ” or “%$&@ you. ” (Notice the difference in tone there, that’s the subtlety of the writing present) Between Roger Boyer and David Zellis, who co-wrote the film, couldn’t one of these guys look at what they had written on paper and say, “Hey wait a second, maybe we could look at the way real human conversations before we write a script?” If I may give further advice, which I feel I’m entitled to do since I paid and sat through the movie, next time you make a movie try to resist the temptation of having shameless shots of attractive women in their bathing suits jumping in the water for no reason, and if your movie is not going to be an actual found-footage-film, don’t introduce a pointless found-footage element in it. I can forgive technical shortcuts, but bad writing? That’s just a complete lack of talent or skill.

    With that out of the way, let me say this. I thought that the casting was pretty good, with Dennis Scullard as Peter (the killer who spends most of his time punching people) standing out in particular. Also, I apologize if I have gotten some of the cast members and characters mixed up, there are no photos of them on the movie’s website and there are so many people that turn up dead in this film that I couldn’t remember all of the names. Getting back on track, Mr. Scullard is good in the role. He has the menacing stare to make him a good villain, he’s got the face and the mannerisms for it and he delivers a pretty good performance considering the material he has received. The leading ladies also show promise. I say keep it up with the acting classes, continue auditioning for small parts and independent films, build up your resume and you could have something going on there. I’m cheering for you.

    Even at an hour and fifteen minutes, and with me being able to cherry pick some good stuff throughout; “Dark Forest” is bad. This is the kind of movie I would watch at home after renting it on DVD and make fun of it, except that the production is so low budget that I would feel bad for doing so. I’m all up for supporting independent movies, so I don’t know, maybe buy your ticket and then just leave as soon as you find that it gets REALLY bad. Don’t ask for a refund, just go see something else and consider the bucks you sunk into this first effort a donation. I wish the guys at Zell-Koj Studio all the best. I just hope their subsequent projects are better than “Dark Forest”. (Theatrical version on the big screen, August 19, 2015)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  22.8.2015 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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