A Hard Place (2025)

Filmmaker J. Horton reached out to see if we could cover his newest film, A Hard Place, and I was more than happy to oblige. Trap is one of his I really enjoyed, and his most recent film before this, Craving, came out really well, so I was excited to see how this one did. 

A Hard Place follows a group of criminals who, after a big score, need to lie low for a bit, so they find their way out to the country to wait for their contact to show up and help them get out of dodge. Unfortunately, as they're waiting, these green tree monsters show up and start eating some of them. Fortunately though, a group of locals are all too willing to help, which is nice, except, could these nice locals have ulterior motives? It's getting to where you can't trust anyone anymore! Among the criminals there's Fish (Rachel Amanda Bryant) who doesn't seem like a criminal as much as someone caught up in a bad situation, and among the locals there's Naja (Ashley Undercuffler) who may not be as untrustworthy as the others. Will they manage to survive all this when the shit hits the fan?

This was a great time. A nice mix of gothic horror and zombie/monster movies, with some offbeat dark humor that manages to work tonally with the rest of the film and doesn't feel out of place--not an easy needle to thread, but Horton and company managed to pull it off. There were a couple elements that didn't work for me though. I thought there were too many characters to keep track of, and I would've preferred if the story focused more on Bryant and Undercuffler's characters, but I think those are more personal tastes on my end, and I get why Horton decided to go in a different direction. And with all those characters, we got some great performances beyond Bryant and Undercuffler. Felissa Rose delivers exactly what you want when you see her name on the tin, and I think the same could be said of Lynn Lowry; Scott Alan Ward is great as the creepy, silent type; and Natalia Santacoloma has a small part, but came off really strong, especially for someone her age. Beyond all that, the locations add a lot of atmosphere, and the practical effects all looked great, which was refreshing to see. This is just a fun horror movie, you can load it up on a Saturday night with your friends, and also support indie creatives at the same time, it's a win-win.

Out of the J. Horton films we've reviewed, of which this is now 5, I think Trap is still my favorite, but this is up there. It's one of those movies where a lot of things get thrown at you, but in a way that made me want to see what was coming next. That's not easy to pull off, because the audience can get lost or overwhelmed, but here it manages to keep the intrigue up and the confusion down--though a little confusion is good, I think. And then out of these five films, I think Monsters in the Woods had the most comedic bent, and while A Hard Place isn't a comedy per se, it injects a lot of off-beat, comedic elements, yet still keeps the tone of the film where it needs to be, and maintains the film's stakes even with the moments of levity. The best might be the educational films on human reproduction, that are like dystopian creepy but hilarious too. It's just really great stuff.

On our Invasion Force review we talked about the term "meta," and how popular a term that is with the kids. We get a little of that here, as we have a zombie movie within this movie, starring Bai Ling, Glenn Plummer, and Sadie Katz. It has that meta element, where it sets the vibe for what the actual movie is going to be about--and speaking of being confused, early on I wasn't sure at points if I was watching the movie or the movie within a movie, which I think is one of those times where a little confusion is good, it added to the overall feel of the movie for me--but it's also a creative way for a filmmaker like Horton who may have names like Bai Ling and Glenn Plummer for only a day, to have them in the film throughout, but they don't have any impact on the story itself, allowing him to make changes as they shoot the rest of the film without worrying about whether or not he can get them back for reshoots. We've actually seen this done before, with Welcome to Willits and Dolph playing a cop on a police procedural that Bill Sage is watching while the drugs are turning on him. It just adds another layer to the film, and is more fun than the usual one-scene cameos with names like these. Before we end this paragraph, I need to mention Sadie Katz, whom we saw in Nipples and Palm Trees back in March of 2013. That was another indie screener, and she turned in a fantastic performance in that film, so it's great to see her back on the site all these years later, mixing it up with Bai Ling and Glenn Plummer.

As I said above, one area that this didn't work for me was the number of characters we had, and how those characters caused us to lose Rachel Amanda Bryant and Ashley Undercuffler's characters for portions of the film, as they were the two most compelling for me. The end of the film teases that there might have been more of a connection between them, but it wasn't fleshed out enough for me, so when that tease happens it made me feel like we missed out. I don't know what I would've cut out though to make their scenes more substantial, I think it's just one of those realities when you have a big cast, people will connect with some characters more than others.

Finally, anytime I think of the title of this film, A Hard Place, the Rolling Stones' "Rock and a Hard Place" gets stuck in my head. I remember it was off the Steel Wheels album, which I bought the tape of back in 1989 as a ten-year-old. I played the video on YouTube before I wrote this paragraph, and realized I probably hadn't heard the song since 1989, but also had heard it so much back then, that I still knew all the words, and remembered the video playing on MTV. Also, Mick Jagger was 46 when that album came out, guess how old I am as I'm writing this. And yet all these years later, and however many songs I've heard in between then and now, when I see "A Hard Place" written somewhere, or I think of the title of this film, that's the song that comes into my head--and I still mishear "put on a clown face" when Jagger sings "put on a kind face." Don't ask me what I thought Jagger would've meant by "put on a clown face," I was ten, it made sense then.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently rent A Hard Place on Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime. This is worth your rental money, and you get to support indie creatives, so you get to enjoy a fun movie and do a good deed. Does it get much better than that? And thank you to Jason Horton for sending the screener for our review, I really enjoyed this.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10555668

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Craving (2023)

In my attempt to get at least one indie movie in per month, I figured I'd see what old friend of the site J. Horton was up to. I saw that this was on Tubi, and had been meaning to watch it for a while, so it seemed like the right time. Unfortunately I was ill and this review sat, but we're making it happen now. In addition to us, another friend of the site, screenwriter Tom Joliffe, has covered this for Flickering Myth.

Craving starts with a couple of local police officers walking through the aftermath of a blood bath in a dive bar outside of town, where they find only one survivor. Flashback to the night before, some locals are enjoying themselves at that same bar, when they hear gunshots outside, the owner (Felissa Rose) gets killed when she tries to investigate, and then the bar and it's patrons are taken over at gunpoint. Who are these people who are holding them hostage? And who are the people outside that seem to want to kill these people? As the night goes on, the gang outside starts pushing to come in, and the gang inside is starting to fracture. All this happens while one of their members is ill. Could he just be a junky going through withdrawals, or is it something more sinister?

This is more of a slow-burner for a horror film, and for the most part it works, so I couldn't figure out why it felt like it was dragging. Yes, the hostage scenario can be hard to mitigate, because it can be repetitive, but the story did a great job adding elements throughout to keep it interesting. When we got to the end though, where we have a fantastic monster reveal, plus Horton goes all out with the practical effects in the killings, that's when it hit me: because we got the ending at the beginning, I couldn't wait to get back there and see what happened, and everything before it was just prolonging the inevitable. In that sense, maybe sticking the end at the end instead of teasing it at the beginning would've been a better bet. All that said, the monster is fantastic, and as I mentioned above Horton sets up a great reveal for it; I loved the practical effects, no punches are pulled, it's all kinds of blood and guts; and perhaps best of all, Horton's direction combined with Sophia Cacciola's cinematography gave us some really well-shot scenes that enhanced the actors' performances, ramped up the suspense, and accentuated the horror. Yes, I couldn't wait to get to the end after seeing the end at the beginning, but that ending delivered, which is what you want.

I believe this is the fourth film of J. Horton's that we've done on the site, the others being Monsters in the Woods, Deceitful, and Trap. Out of those, I still have Trap as my favorite of his, but this is probably my second-favorite now. This has elements of the suspenseful interplay between the characters that Trap had, which was important to keep the hostage scenario interesting, but then he goes all out at the end when we get the monster reveal and the monster starts killing people. The other aspect of this that I thought worked really well was his editing. I'd seen a couple of his documentaries and the editing work he'd done on those, so it was cool to see it play such an important role in this film. It's part of the art of film making that, in more modern contexts, is often used to make a movie something different from what a director initially wanted, maybe after a studio, producer, or even actor has their say, so to see it used here to enhance a director's vision was refreshing.

As a writer myself, I know one of the toughest things to do is to not fall so much in love with your characters that you can't put them through the ringer, or even kill them off, but it didn't seem like Horton or his co-writer, Gregory Blair, had that problem at all. Pretty much everyone gets it, and gets it in horrific fashion. One of the interesting things was, despite having so many characters for a film like this, because of the way it played out where we get most of the action at the end, it gave us time to get to know a lot of them, so when their head was ripped open or their entrails were ripped out and thrown across the bar, they weren't simply "store owner number 2," but also they weren't playing types, like "Zack the Jerk Guy who we can't wait to see get it." It's something we don't usually see in a horror film, to put that much work into creating people who are going to die by the end, but it added another layer here.

This film has a bit of a "Final Girl" element in Rachel Amanda Bryant's Shiloh character, but the weird thing is, out of all the characters, she doesn't get much of a backstory. Other characters get flashbacks or more plot exposition that give us a better sense of who they are and what their motivations are, and I feel like Shiloh could've used that as well. How did she end up working at that bar? What is it about her that would make her a candidate to be the one who survives the beast's attack? One thing I liked about the flashbacks is it felt like it gave the actors whose characters had them more material that they could draw from, which in turn made their performances more authentic. It's an interesting idea that I had never considered before, because many films use other actors in the flashbacks, like younger versions of the characters, which doesn't give the actor that extra layer to build from that they get when they're performing the flashback themselves. In microbudget films like these, with tight shooting schedules, I think small touches like that can make a huge difference.

Finally if you're not following J. Horton on YouTube, you should be, because he produces videos on the business of film making (you can also see clips of the videos in reel format on his Instagram). Even someone like myself who doesn't make movies, the information is invaluable, as it pulls back the curtain and gives more insight into how the sausage is made; but also his tips on proper social media promotion apply to anyone with something they're trying to sell, including my novels. He both demystifies the process, but also doesn't sugarcoat anything. Like when he talks about your social media strategy, it's not a silver bullet or a magical way to game the system, it's a lot of work, but he's showing where he's found you can get the most out of that work. There always entertaining and insightful watches, and worth checking out.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently catch this on Tubi here in the States. It's definitely worth checking out, I really enjoyed it, and streaming on Tubi is a great way to support an indie filmmaker without breaking your bank.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17069062

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Deceitful (2013)

Our friend director Jason Horton (Twitter @jhorton2003) came to me to review the new film he directed, Deceitful.  We've done two of his other films before: Monsters in the Woods, which I was a little hard on, and Trap, which I really enjoyed; but with those films, Horton also wrote them.  This will be a little different, because he wasn't one of the four listed writing credits, so we'll see how that goes.  I know what you're thinking: "Four people on the writing credits? That's never a good sign."  Open mind, open mind, open mind.

Deceitful is about Robert, played by Terry Savage, the co-owner of a lucrative company that programs apps, which are designed by Isaac (played by Fredro Starr).  He's also cheating on his wife with his sister-in-law, and is selling the company behind Isaac's back.  When a mysterious yet beautiful woman comes to work as his maid, will all his transgressions come to a fatal end?



Unfortunately, this looked like it was written by four people.  Things were a little all over the place, characters were unevenly developed, and the action and conflict would disappear in a maze of dialog that often repeated the same information multiple times in the same conversation.  Ultimately this had maybe enough material for a Silk Stalkings episode, and I think if some of the characters and moving parts were trimmed from it, it would have been a really good Silk Stalkings episode.  For instance, the plot twist at the end is very predictable, which made it not work in this case, but if we're looking at two detectives investigating the aftermath and piecing together the story as we go, it would've been more compelling.  A cohesive, consistent story is difficult to achieve though when so many people have their hands in writing it.

I think Jason did a great job mitigating these issues through his directing and Steve Snyder's cinematography (Mr. Snyder was also one of the four writers).  Yes, there were moments where we had a series of single-face shots that might have been better with a wide shot and both parties speaking-- I don't know if he was going for an Ozu effect, or maybe the actors' agents wanted more shots of their faces on-screen, or maybe they were just added in after--, but much more often we had really great frames that upped the tension or made the scenes more stylized and sexy.  There were also a lot of great establishing shots-- or to go back to Ozu again, "pillow shots"-- that added more of that Noirish atmosphere I think the writers of the film were ultimately going for.  I feel like Trap was more consistent because it was both Horton's vision in the writing and the directing, but I thought he acquitted himself really well here.



This scene right here was absolutely electric.  The acting, writing, and cinematography all came together in a way that created a fantastic scene.  We had Nancy Gomez, who played the new maid, turning on Kalilah Harris, who played Savage's wife, after Harris slapped her.  This is everything I want in a movie like this, but unfortunately the script didn't offer too many opportunities for scenes like this to happen.  Tension, intrigue, just enough violence, these are the kinds of things that underpin a great suspense thriller.  Whoever wrote this scene should've been the one to write the whole script.  And again, cinematography, great job cutting to a close-up, cutting to a wider shot, then finishing overhead, all made it look great; and Horton as a director leaned on both actresses and allowed them to carry the scene, which they did well.

One of the problems I had with the unevenness was that we never had the right character development.  Right away, we have a great sex scene between Jenn Pinto's Gabrielle and Terry Savage's Robert, which really pulls us into the film.  Right after, we're focusing on Jenn Pinto in the bath tub, looking at a pregnancy test.  The feeling then is that the film will be centered on her.  This is only reinforced with her conversation with Savage, which hints at some intrigue between the two, and maybe a devious plan.  This disappears though, and we only see Pinto once more before she comes in at the very end.  Why is she so central to the beginning then?  And then we're sure Savage's Robert will be the main character, only to see him disappear too as we focus on the tension between Gomez and Harris.  By the time we get to the end, it's just a swingers party with the couples switching partners.  Fine, whatever, but what is that doing for us?  And what do we care about these characters?



We have two rappers in this, the already mentioned Fredro Starr from Onyx, and Layzie Bone from Bone Thuggs N' Harmony.  Fredro had a much bigger part, and I think he was trying to go outside what's expected of him with this role, playing a software developer and not a thug.  I think it would've worked, except his first scene is dialog with Savage about Savage selling the company that was mostly "But dude, you can't do this!"  "But I am doing it."  "But dude, we grew up together!"  "I don't care, I'm selling the company."  "But dude, you can't!  We came up together!"  "So, I'm selling the company."  I was like "Oh my God, we get it!  End scene!"  So that's Fredro Starr as a software developer.  Layzie Bone was a detective, and if you look at the cover, you get the sense that he's a detective trying to crack a case.  There is no case to crack though, he just shows up at the end, and doesn't really sell the whole "I'm a detective" thing at all.  Let's just say he's not Ice-T in SVU.  On the other hand, I'm cool with that.  If he's going to have a one-scene cameo, let it just be Layzie Bone being Layzie Bone.

Below is the pool boy.  This scene he had with Savage was very Skin-a-max non-sex scene, and there was something about it that had me hoping these two would be having an affair.  Instead, of course, they went paint-by-numbers pool boy hooking up with Savage's disillusioned wife.  I would've loved that relationship between Savage and the pool boy though.  They both have these imdb bios about how "He's always been a self-starter" or "He was this and that when the acting bug hit him", like they're these real practitioners of the craft of acting.  Good, try some method acting and make out with each other.  What, you don't want to do that?  Why, I thought you were a professional.  Seriously though, the issues this movie had with the writing wouldn't have been so bad had this been a Skin-a-max flick.  Maybe if they had something like the need for a love scene every twenty minutes, it would've given the writers more focus and kept the script from the meandering dialog and back-to-back scenes where relatively nothing happens.



Finally, Dorian Gregory has a one-scene cameo at the very end, where he plays the head of the company trying to buy out Savage's.  I would have thought that he'd have more imdb credits than all of the rest of the cast combined, and I'd be wrong about that, because Fredro Starr actually has 13 more than him by himself.  Fredro Starr is also only 3 months younger than Gregory.  Wow, who'd'a thunk it.  I'm assuming Gregory was paid for one day of shooting, and they probably got him in and out as quickly as possible.  Most of the shots are just of his face delivering his lines, so I wonder if they just shot him, had him read, then shipped him off.  Either way, it was great seeing him, if only for a second.

Okay, so while I think Jason Horton did a solid job directing this, it couldn't overcome the fact that it was written by four people.  I know with these low-budget films things happen, but that doesn't make it any easier to follow when characters that seem like they're going to be the focus of the film disappear, or when the plot becomes uneven.  These are issues that can be mitigated if there's any amount of tension and intrigue, which some scenes had, but ultimately not enough to make this work.  I couldn't find this on Netflix or RedBox, but it is available to buy on Amazon.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2706120/

Trap (2010)

A little while back director Jason Horton sent me a screener for his new film Monsters in the Woods, and after I reviewed that, he asked me if I'd take a look at the one he did before it called Trap. I had to get it on Amazon VOD, because, as I found out later from his blog My Life as a Low Budget Moviemaker (link is to his posts on Trap), the distributor he thought he had going in backed out. It's a very interesting backstory, and worth checking out if you get a chance.

Trap is about two men, hired by a mysterious employer to keep an eye on a girl that's been kidnapped and held for ransom. It's an already tense situation that's only made more so by the decision of one them to go on a fast, which is making him very crabby. As days go by, and no ransom money is forthcoming, it's looking increasingly like they may have to off the girl, which is an issue for the other guy, because he's falling in love with her. When she devises a plan to get the money from her dad, it's a last desperate attempt to salvage something from what looks like a lost cause. But, can they trust her?



This one worked better for me than Monsters in the Woods. Though it was running in place for a 20 minute chunk near the middle, an area where things were a little too repetitive, it recovers and hits its stride, finishing really well (I did have a major issue with the end though, and I'll discuss that in the second to last paragraph to avoid spoiling it for anyone). It had a lot of really great elements that you'd want from a suspenseful Noir-ish flick: a great main character, solid and believable plot twists, and a lead female that's equal parts sexy, damsel in distress, and manipulative. This is the kind of film that's easy to overdo, and I've seen enough that make that mistake, so it's refreshing to watch one that doesn't add too much, and still manages to be complicated and nuanced.

I have to thank Jason for having me check this one out, especially since Monsters in the Woods didn't work for me, and he could've easily taken that personally and written me off. Had that happened, I probably wouldn't have seen Trap, which would've been too bad. The one thing I can say about both this and Monsters is that they both feel genuine. These aren't vanity projects, nothing's done haphazardly or seemingly as an afterthought, and that comes through. I've seen so many low budget flicks that are either a film maker just doing it for fun, or a distribution house just pumping out the cheapest, fastest whatever that can turn the biggest profit, and that kind of attitude permeates everything, from the acting to the crew, and effects the overall quality. I like seeing something like this, especially with a small cast and only a few locations, where they may have to make sacrifices due to budgetary constraints, but they make up for them by doing the best job they can, and taking what they do seriously.



In the Monsters review I mentioned Ashton Blanchard as one of the standouts for me, even though she only a had a small part. She had a much bigger part here, and was even better with it. One could make the argument that she spent most of the film bound and gagged, so it's not like she did a lot of acting in those scenes, but I think that meant she had to make that much more out of the scenes where she wasn't, and she did that. Towards the end when she wasn't tied up, she manages to be coquettish and seductive, despite her hair being a mess, and having red marks on her face from the gag that make her look like she had trouble drinking Kool-Aid. Her performance was the lynch pin on which the film was held, and while it was the direction and cinematography that made that work in the early going when we just had shots of her tied up on the bed, later, when she needed to take over, she did it in a way that picked up perfectly from what had been built earlier.

That's not to take away anything from the other performances in the film, because they were solid too. Alan Perada played what was ultimately the main character. What I didn't like about his character was that early on, the story focused more on his partner, and things would've felt more consistent if they'd focused more on him. Once his character transitions near the 45-minute mark, it worked better for me, though he was able to make both ends of his character come off, the mysterious, perhaps sinister silent type, and then the concerned, love-struck, caring criminal. Alonzo F. Jones plays Perada's partner in crime, and while his character is kind of inconsistent too, it makes more sense with who he's supposed to be. And like Perada, he's good at playing both ends of the spectrum, and the transitions are believable. Finally, in the Monsters review I also praised Annemarie Pazmino for her small part as the make-up artist, and while she only has a small part in this too, it was good again. She just has a real natural quality to her acting, that I even noticed in a joke behind the scenes video of Trap that Jason posted on his blog.



Bondage and kidnapping fantasies have been in the news recently, with the story of a Portland, OR couple that were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace after their Valentine's Day role playing crossed paths with some concerned citizens that were afraid the girl, whom they saw bound and gagged and naked in the back seat of the couple's car, might be the victim of a potential serial killer or something. It brings up an intriguing duality in this kind of thing that I think Jason plays with really well in Trap. On the one hand, there is a kinky element, a sexiness to bondage that the film isn't afraid to cultivate; but on the other, there's also a disturbing violence against women aspect that's obviously a part of a scenario like the one in Trap, when things aren't consensual, and the movie never let's us forget that either-- not to mention a statutory rape angle to the sexuality that I found jarring. That's something a movie like this should do, muddy the waters, make us go through a range of emotions and not let us get too comfortable.

Before I get into my issue with the ending, I want to bring up an issue I had with the costumes or outfits, at least for this one scene. We have this woman in a short sun dress and flip-flops, running around with a sawed-off shotgun as if she's done this kind of thing before, even though a woman that's done this kind of thing before would've worn something more appropriate. It looked so out of place, it had the feel of a low budget flick that can't afford a costume designer, and just has people show up in whatever and shoots the scene anyway. In the credits I saw that they did have a costume designer though, a woman named Maxi Priest (not the singer), so who knows. It was one of the few areas where the movie betrayed itself though.



SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!
I wanted to discuss an aspect of the ending, but wanted to make sure that people who wanted to see the film would have sufficient warning to avoid this paragraph so it wouldn't ruin things for them. Consider yourself warned, read on at your own risk. My issue was that Ashton's character is killed by Jones near the end. Part of it felt mean spirited, but mostly it was the fact that we'd spent the whole film watching this girl tied up, gagged, blindfolded, forced to eat bad food, hit by Jones, then finally seducing Perada in an attempt to escape alive. She goes through all of this, and we watch her go through all of this, only to get killed off? It felt like my investment wasn't paid back, if that makes sense. I get the idea of plot twists and trying to surprise the viewer, but like the time the Maine state revenue service sent me an $8000 bill in back taxes for two years I lived in New Hampshire, not all surprises are good ones.
END SPOILER ALERT!!!! END SPOILER ALERT!!!!

This is available on VOD, digital download, and DVD through Amazon. I'm glad I had the chance to watch it, and I think it's worth checking out. If you're into Noir-ish flicks, especially ones made on a smaller scale with fewer characters and fewer sets, driven by the right mix of tension, sexuality, and violence, you'll enjoy it. Thanks again to Jason Horton for sending me the screener to Monsters in the Woods, and having me check this one out too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1494828/

Monsters in the Woods (2012)

The director of this film, Jason Horton, contacted me to see if I'd look at a screener of it. I always jump at the opportunity to do that, especially in a case like his with a microbudget film that's looking for publicity. It's one of the things that, when I started this blog in 2007, I never imagined I'd be doing, so each time it happens, it's just another reminder of how far this thing has come.

Monsters in the Woods is about the making of a microbudget film directed by Glenn Plummer, the cast and crew of which is out in the woods re-shooting some scenes in order to get the film sold. As they're shooting though, problems occur that seem like the usual issues plaguing any low-budget movie set, until they start becoming deadly. What evil could be threatening them, and can they make it out alive?



I'm disappointed, because I really wanted to like this one, but it didn't work for me. The first five minutes were great. We get a couple kids out in a tent doing it, and then they're taken out by some birdman thing. I thought, "sweet, a campy slasher flick with some great bird dudes, this could be a lot of fun!" But then we got the movie-in-a-movie paradigm, mixed with the found-footage cinematic device, and things ground to a halt. For the next 30 minutes we only had Glenn Plummer, some funny dialog, and a couple interesting characters like the script supervisor to keep us involved. Then Plummer dies inexplicably, and the film turns to what should be it's best stuff, with the great monsters and great gore effects that looked well beyond their budget; but here is where the dialog that was so good before is so bad now, that the acting that was so natural before came off affected, and that killed it all for me. We had people who just show up off the street toting guns, discussing their relationship history like the loquacious drunk at the party we all try to avoid; wordy lines like "they have no idea as to what kind of hell that's approaching them...", the kind of buttressing of words with more words you'd expect from a People's Court litigant trying to impress the judge; repeating of dialog in consecutive scenes that cries out for more proofreading; and finally, people withholding information from other characters for no reason, like "where's Bravo?" "Um..." "Tell me, where's Bravo!" Even I was yelling at the screen: "goddamn it, tell him where the hell Bravo is so we can move on!" When things were off-beat, the writing and acting felt like they fit; but when things became serious, everything felt forced, and as a result, didn't work for me.

It might sound like I'm judging this by too high of a standard, that I'm expecting Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender out of a microbudget horror flick, but that's not the case. I'm only judging it by the standard it set itself. Yes, there wasn't a lot going on in the first 30 minutes, but the characters made sense, their conversations were funny, and the situations they were in worked. For instance, the whole thing with the script supervisor being thrust into the film. All of that was great. It's almost like it didn't trust what it had there, and had to pile on more and more stuff; and it never felt right when it became serious. Affected is the best term I can use to describe it. When Schwarzenegger goes into the woods all serious to take down the Predator, it works. When these actors go into the woods all serious to take down some Hellbeasts, it's sauteed in wrong sauce, I'm not buying it, and I definitely don't want to hear them talk faux tough about it. I can get that from any number of short films on YouTube, I'm buying a movie for more of what the first 30 minutes gave me-- with more action, of course.



I listened to about ten minutes of the commentary that came with the film, but turned it off because I didn't want to watch the film in its entirety a second time, and because most of that ten minutes consisted of three guys joking about someone's cell phone going off and what not. Anyway, one thing I did catch in that ten minutes really irked me. They mentioned Glenn Plummer, and Jason, the director, told us how they only had him for one day, so they had to kill him off early in the film because they couldn't shoot that much of him. That's fine. Next he said something about how the way Plummer died was somehow funny-- which it wasn't, it was pretty much how Richard Gere killed his wife's, Diane Lane's, lover in Unfaithful-- and from there went on about how killing Plummer off, even though he was top billed, left us, the audience, thinking anything could happen at any moment, which we know is just a cop out, you killed him because you couldn't afford him, but I understand, you gotta do what you gotta do. But then one of the other people on the commentary joked about how they were able to top bill Plummer, use his name to sell the film, but only have him in for 30 minutes of the movie. He even said something to the effect of "all you young film makers at home should take a note on that." Yes, definitely, we audiences love nothing more than a good old fashioned bait-and-switch. Please, splash an actor's name on the cover so we buy the film, then let us see that he's barely in it. Yes, young film makers at home, treat your audience like a bunch of morons, we love being deceived. I don't put that on the director, it was someone else in the commentary that said it, and I bet the guy that did say it didn't even know how he was coming off, but it does show you that sometimes the people making films don't think about the people they expect to consume their films, yet they still expect us to consume them just the same.

The ol' found-footage technique. All the kids are doing it nowadays. The only thing about it here that I had trouble with, was the added effect of the picture scrambling. I can see using that at specific plot points to obscure information you want us to know later on, but to do it just for effect is annoying. I've spent my whole life dealing with fuzzy pictures from bad signals or bad cable wires, VHS tapes with bad tracking, scratched DVDs, pixelated digital images, and streaming movies that freeze on a slow Internet connection. With all the things not associated with the film that impair my viewing, the last thing I want is the actual movie to do it to me too. Again, I think it's just not thinking about the audience, which is fine if you don't want any of us to pay for it; otherwise, help us out a little bit.



One thing this movie can really hang its hat on though is the special effects. The monsters were great, the blood effects and gore were great, definitely a much higher quality than what you'd associate with a no-budget or microbudget film. The movie also did a lot of cutting away before the violence became bloody, then cutting back for the aftermath. I like that too. And when the film really kicks into gear and we get the bulk of the kills, it's a lot of guys getting killed off-screen and the women that watch them getting covered in blood. This is what I come to low-budget horror for, the camp, the gore, the fun kills, and the creative ways they mitigate their budgetary constraints. I get that a lot of this film was a satire or commentary on what one goes through to make a low-budget film, but in a way it's a parody of itself, the way the Jason, the actual director/scriptwriter, becomes too ambitious with a story that runs away with itself-- as many indie film makers do-- instead of just keeping it simple.

Glenn Plummer as the director was my favorite character in the film. In a way it would've been better had he just mailed it in, because I wouldn't have missed him so much when he was killed off. I have a feeling that, with all the DTV stuff he's done in the past, he relished the idea of being a low-budget director himself and parodying all the overbearing personalities he's had to deal with. The other two characters I liked were the script supervisor (who I mentioned above) and the make-up girl. The script supervisor, played by Ashton Blanchard, is the one on the cover, and according to the commentary, she was written in after another actress bowed out-- similar to the way she was in the film. For some reason though, she gets her face ripped off later by one of the monsters. I felt like shaking my fist at the screen yelling "why movie? Why do you take everything I like and make it bad?", it was not an ending worthy of her character. The make-up girl was cool too, though for some reason she's not in the credits on imdb [I found out from Jason subsequently that this was due to union issues. The actress that played her was Annemarie Pazmino]. There was something about their performances that wasn't nearly as affected, especially when the film brought in the monsters and the script went south.



Finally, the executive producer character was played by a poor man's Andrew Zimmern, the guy from Bizarre Foods. How was that not what this movie was about? Imagine, this Zimmern-esque guy has a Bizarre Foods-esque show that goes into a tribal area, and are warned against going into the woods to get a rare fruit, because there are bird people in there. He and his crew ignore them at their own peril, and madness ensues. I say you mix in Glenn Plummer as either a medicine man, or a hermit in the woods-- or maybe he's an executive in an office calling to find out where they are or demanding they go in and get that fruit. That would be awesome, him in a suit in a high-rise office yelling obscenities into a Bluetooth.

I better stop before I sound too much like the studio exec trying to change the director's film from his/her original vision, making the movie's satire complete-- or maybe my review as a blogger already did that, I just need some shots of me from my parents' basement typing it with Doritos crumbs on my chest. I want to thank Jason Horton again for sending me a screener of his film, and I'm sorry it didn't work for me. For more information on Monsters in the Woods, you can check out their official website at http://www.monstersinthewoods.com/ . I wish Jason and everyone else involved with the film the best of luck both with this and all their future projects, and hope to check out more of their stuff further down the road.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1686902/