If you’ve ever wanted to break out in song while people are being killed in the woods..
Don’t Go in the Woods (2010)
Created By: Vincent D’Onofrio
The Prologue
Vincent D’Onofrio, who you may recall as an actor who starred in Full Metal Jacket and Law and Order, is behind the director’s chair for, Don’t Go in the Woods. And if you haven’t heard yet, Don’t Go in the Woods is in fact a horror musical! A woods based slasher with music to be exact. Now I’ve never been a fan of musicals. I really didn’t care for “Repo” and I know a ton of people loved that one. So I wasn’t expecting much when I went into this one. Needless to say, the results were a bit of a mixed bag at the end of the day for me. It’s a film I won’t say I hate, but it’s a movie that is lacking on a few fronts.
The Movie
A young band heads to the woods in order to focus on writing new songs. Hoping to emerge with new music that will score them their big break, they instead find themselves in the middle of a nightmare beyond comprehension. And if you don’t like indie music, then the horror these people face might not result to the amount the horror you face while watching. I myself am a bit of an indie music fan, so outside the bad Bright Eyes impression of the lead I didn’t have much of a problem with the music.
As I’ve touched on here already, I didn’t have an issue with the music here. Maybe there’s a bit too much of it overall. but it was music that didn’t suck and some of it was rather catchy. Out of the musical numbers our cast breaks into, only one sucked and it sucked very badly. Maybe that was intentional since the actual horror portion of the film breaks out during this horrible number. But if there is a very negative portion of the film, it would be the fact that for a horror film that runs around an hour and a half, only about 15 of those minutes are horror. The other time is spent singing and following some hipsters in the woods. Hipsters that are being…well..hipsters.
When our band travels to the woods to be alone, without the comfort of phones, drugs, or anything else that’s typical of horror films from the past. I admit it was a bit of a surprise and an interesting concept. Of course this gets tossed out the window when the girlfriends and other random women of the band follow them without notification. This of course sets off our frustrated and strange lead singer of the band, who looks a whole heck of a lot like Elijah Woods. We then are treated to him being an overall ass and walking around with his guitar whining his way through a song or two. Of course these woods are loaded with hunters that don’t care much for our city folk, but are they the root of the film’s evil or is it something else?
If you couldn’t already tell, this film is different. But as different as it is, it still won’t be for everyone. I really liked the music but I think it needed some more actual horror scenes in it for it to be truly outstanding. And it did have the potential to be a breath of fresh air and a classic, but the chance gets lost as it spends about 80 minutes of it’s time on dudes being moody and singing. So instead of being a breath of fresh air and a modern classic, the film has to settle for just being different, odd, but still having some good tunes. The gore was good for what it was, but their just wasn’t enough of it. So to sum it up, it was a nice try and it’s not horrible. But it needed more actual horror.
The Conclusion
I’m sure some will love this. At the same time, I’m sure many will hate it. I find myself somewhere in the middle. I didn’t hate it, I liked the music, but I wanted the horror aspect of it more obvious. It needed to have more killing throughout the film, rather than just at the end. I will admit that I think Vincent D’Onofrio at least shows that he knows his way around a camera.
The Rating (6/10)
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