The Woods Within (2014)

(out of 5)

The Woods Within (2014)
directed by:  Brandon Prewitt
starring:  Tori Ahr, Tyler Riley, Jon Kovach, Corey Orem, Hannah Herdt, Joel Liles, Shane Jossart, Courtney Durrough, Brandon Prewitt
Format:  Online Review Screener

    

       I'm a sucker for Studio 605's Campground directed by Roman Jossart and when I saw they were making another movie I was excited to see it and how they progressed since.  Well I like what I saw last night when Mr. Jossart asked me to review Brandon Prewitt's The Woods Within.  The movie follows Nicole (Tori Ahr) and Devin (Tyler Riley) who go on a camping trip with their friends on their Uncle Randy's (Brandon Prewitt) backwoods property.  Nicole is actually the one having the party but mom says she has to take her little brother with her if she is allowed to do so.    Nicole of course is very put off by this as are her friends well her asshole friends and boyfriend.  I think out of all of them Chad (Shane Jossart) was the most tolerable character wise.  Nicole also allowed Devin to bring along his friend Blake (Clay Orem) and promises the two if they stay out of their hair she will get them some beer for the night.   Devin and Blake are picked on and bullied from the get go and Blake doesn't really want anything to do with the trip but Devin is his best friend and he doesn't want to leave him alone with the wolves.  The whole situation was very familiar to me, something else I liked.  The friends all party down till they pass out and when they come to in the morning something is very wrong. They are being hunted by a masked killer and no one knows why and no one trusts anyone.  
     Acting wise everything started great very believable for basically the entire cast.  The second half of the movie during crisis time became a problem for some of them but all in all I was not disappointed.  Hannah Herdt especially shined in the movie in my eyes.  She WAS the character, very natural if that makes any sense at all.  Tyler Riley was another great addition to the cast in my opinion, he did very well as Devin very much believed everything that was happening to him in the movie. 
      Effects wise the movie was mostly old school style with almost no cgi which I appreciate.  Not everyone, hell not most get cgi right which is the big problem with cgi fx.  It's one thing if it's a silly SyFy style shark movie or something but for me a bad cgi effect just looks like you edited a video game into your movie.  That's probably generational and either way I don't hate them it's just nice seeing hands on style fx making.  Most especially the first death you see in this movie and the burned corpse, very realistic.  We have an explosion in this movie as well which was completely unexpected and an example of a cgi effect that worked very well.  605 really takes time with their effects as a whole.  They did with Campground and they did in this one.

     I really wanted to know how the story turned out.  It's nice to have a movie where you do care about at least a couple of the characters.  A lot of movies lose this and some just ignore it but if I don't care about any of the characters I generally don't care for the movie and rarely do I rewatch movies with unlikeable characters.  It felt kind of rushed at the climax but the plot had its small twists and turns and in the end I enjoyed it and will watch it again.  Recommended for any fan of "out in the woods" movies like myself.  I went to parties just like this and kept thinking about them while I watched.