The Grave Outdoors

(image from Dead Wood)

Movie watchers be warned, if a group of young people venture out to the woods and make road kill of its local inhabitants, you better believe nature will come back and bite them in the ass, or the neck, or the chest cavity.

New on DVD, Dark Wood (Menan Films, 2007) begins like many horror-in-the-woods films with young adults venturing deep into the woods for a camping trip full with skinny dipping in dark lakes, alcohol and easy sex. I believe I recall something of deer brains being smashed against the front bumper on the way to their camping site. Anyway, one by one, they are plucked off by something in the woods. This haunting and unusual story reminds me a little of the new genre Japanese horror, where emotion left behind by the dead and is returned to take vengeance on the unsuspecting living. Unfortunately, I believe the film falls short of its vision. The idea was good, but the story probably could have been told better in an episode of the X Files, and maybe with a little bigger budget.

In Nature's Grave (Arclight Films, 2008), Peter, played by Jim Caviezel, hits a kangaroo on the way to an Australian beach camping trip with his dejected wife. With a bigger budget than Dead Wood, this film almost hits the mark of a made-for-TV true crime. Blatant shots of the couple's attack on nature, and natures slow, very slow imprecation on the careless couple make this movie hard to sit through. The end held a couple surprises and some nice gory scenes, but I think my time was wasted on this one.

Fortunately, there are plenty more new movies taking place in the wild. Wild Country (Gabriel Films, 2005) took some time to capture my attention and looks like it was edited in a public access television studio. The creature seems to roll across the screen as if taped to a popsicle stick and literally slid across the film strip by hand. Its pretty funny. What I liked was the design of the creature itself. I don't want to give it away, but it was pretty scary looking, and not much like anything I've seen before. Its movements are stiff and mechanical, but the sound wasn't terrible and the director was great about not really giving away the creature until near the end. It's cry was distant until it was ready to tear its prey apart, and we never really knew where it was going to be. Though I suspected the ending a little, I was pretty satisfied with the last scene. If you don't mind the faulty special effects, this is a fun movie for the kind of horror fans who aren't satisfied with the two or three blockbuster horror movies a year.