Starring: Brittany Allen, Freddie Stroma, Melanie Papalia, Jesse Moss, Anja Savcic, Gil Bellows, Michael Ironside, Sean Rogerson, Emily Perkins, Mike Kovac, Ian Brown, Fred Keating, Mackenzie Gray, Reese Alexander.
Year Of Release: 2014
Certificate: 15 (UK)
Runtime: 106 Miutes
Director: Colin Minihan (Half of The Vicious Brothers who together wrote)
Synopsis: "A group of friends on a weekend trip to a cabin in the woods find themselves terrorized by alien visitors." IMDB
Here we are, another "teen slasher in the woods", or is it? They take the overly used concept and put their own twist on it only like The Vicious Brothers could. These two are brilliant in the Horror world with two previous films which I really enjoyed in "Grave Encounters" and "Grave Encounters 2".
The film opens with April (Allen) and Kyle (Stroma) who are getting ready to spend their weekend at April's parents' cabin in the woods (yes that cliche ha) which is now being sold due to her parents being separated and divorcing. However, Kyle has other plans to their couples getaway, he decides to do the stereotypical Horror film plan of taking a bunch of idiotic and loathsome friends (Papalia, Moss and Savcic) along with. Obviously annoying his girlfriend in the process who planned on giving Kyle some huge news.
Kyle on the other hand, had his own huge news to propose to April, turns out that everybody has something to get of their chest. Upon arriving in town they are abruptly stopped by local Sheriff Murphy (Bellows) who gives them a stern warning about how they should be acting while staying.
Overall, the film was the Alien related Horror/Science Fiction that the genre has been waiting for, the film apparently written by The Vicious Brothers back when they were in college and it shows it has nuances and tropes of newly comers to the Horror world. The film was nicely paced and had a nice blend of thrills, science fiction and scares, it played well on the "lore" of extraterrestrials and abductions, the acting is less than desirable at times, however that is a given due to the low budget nature of the film. The acting from legendary actor Michael Ironside was brilliant he is enjoyable in most he does.
The film at times itself is a saving grace for a genre I have seen countless films for, they are usually overly paced and lacking in story. However, this time around the story was fresh and new in its own way, the final forty minutes or so was a beautiful mix of darkly shot scenes, alien stalking and goosebumps causing shots of "the mother ship". I will say though, the aliens do seem to be coming for no reason at all there is no back story to what is going on so we are just thrown into this world in which these things exist. I will say, the end of this film was a shock that was a wonderful inclusion to the genre.
A very well produced film with brilliant camera work, strides better than their previous tries in "Grace Encounters 1 & 2", the CGI is incredible considering it is such a low budget film. I'm very much excited looking forward to The Vicious Brothers future work, up to now they have failed to disappoint me I have been a huge fan of their work to date.
7/10
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