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10. Redwood (2017), dir. Tom Paton
Sunday, 12 September 2021 21:31I watched this last Sunday, choosing it deliberately because I knew it would be fairly undemanding and I had been out late the night before. I knew about it because it had been screened at the Starburst Film Festival in 2018, but had clashed with other things that I and the people I was with wanted to see, so I hadn't been able to watch it at the time. However, it was also screened on the Horror Channel not long afterwards, so the recording had been waiting for me on my Sky box for some time.
The main narrative involves a couple called Josh and Beth. Josh is a musician who has recently been diagnosed with leukaemia, so they are doing 'bucket-list' things, which for him includes going on a three-day hike up a mountain to some falls, camping overnight along the way. He and Beth meet two rangers during their hike: one at the start who warns them to stick to the designated public area and not go off the path, and then another part-way up who says he is a 'special' kind of ranger, carries a bag of sharpened wooden stakes, and just casually double-checks with them that they are not planning to go near 'the mausoleum'.
Well, you can see where this is going. Obviously, they go off the path, an action which Josh suggests on the grounds that it will allow them to take a short-cut and therefore have more time at the falls. Once they've done so, scary things start happening. During the day-time they start coming across patches of slimy gore on the forest floor, and at night they begin hearing cries and seeing humanoid figures amongst the trees. By their second night off-piste, what is clearly a vampire (of the ravening predator kind) prowls directly outside their tent, and they have to scare it away with a flare and run for it. They end up at the ranger camp at the top of the mountain, but find only a few scattered remains of the ranger left, and come under attack by a horde of vampires who pull Josh off into the depths of a building, leaving Beth alone and terrified.
So far, so good. We have the classic and often very effective set-up of people dealing with a real-life trauma (Josh's leukaemia) also finding themselves face to face with supernatural terrors, and the two situations mirroring and feeding into one another. Even before the vampires start showing themselves, the tensions in Josh and Beth's relationship are neatly sketched out. She's terrified of losing him, he doesn't really want to give her space to say that and is irritated that she's bringing the mood down on his adventure. And obviously the scarier their situation gets, the more the fragility of their relationship shows up. Meanwhile, the gradual build-up of atmosphere as strange things happen around them is well-paced, and we get some nice scary moments by the time the vampires are stalking them directly.
Then there's a twist. ( So I will cut the rest, as it's better watched unspoilt )
So, in the end the ending just wrecks the whole thing, and presumably explains why it has a catastrophically poor rating on any internet review-aggregator site you might care to consult. Still, for character development and building tension along the way, it is not actually as bad as those scores might suggest. Good enough for a brainless Sunday evening watch, anyway.
The main narrative involves a couple called Josh and Beth. Josh is a musician who has recently been diagnosed with leukaemia, so they are doing 'bucket-list' things, which for him includes going on a three-day hike up a mountain to some falls, camping overnight along the way. He and Beth meet two rangers during their hike: one at the start who warns them to stick to the designated public area and not go off the path, and then another part-way up who says he is a 'special' kind of ranger, carries a bag of sharpened wooden stakes, and just casually double-checks with them that they are not planning to go near 'the mausoleum'.
Well, you can see where this is going. Obviously, they go off the path, an action which Josh suggests on the grounds that it will allow them to take a short-cut and therefore have more time at the falls. Once they've done so, scary things start happening. During the day-time they start coming across patches of slimy gore on the forest floor, and at night they begin hearing cries and seeing humanoid figures amongst the trees. By their second night off-piste, what is clearly a vampire (of the ravening predator kind) prowls directly outside their tent, and they have to scare it away with a flare and run for it. They end up at the ranger camp at the top of the mountain, but find only a few scattered remains of the ranger left, and come under attack by a horde of vampires who pull Josh off into the depths of a building, leaving Beth alone and terrified.
So far, so good. We have the classic and often very effective set-up of people dealing with a real-life trauma (Josh's leukaemia) also finding themselves face to face with supernatural terrors, and the two situations mirroring and feeding into one another. Even before the vampires start showing themselves, the tensions in Josh and Beth's relationship are neatly sketched out. She's terrified of losing him, he doesn't really want to give her space to say that and is irritated that she's bringing the mood down on his adventure. And obviously the scarier their situation gets, the more the fragility of their relationship shows up. Meanwhile, the gradual build-up of atmosphere as strange things happen around them is well-paced, and we get some nice scary moments by the time the vampires are stalking them directly.
Then there's a twist. ( So I will cut the rest, as it's better watched unspoilt )
So, in the end the ending just wrecks the whole thing, and presumably explains why it has a catastrophically poor rating on any internet review-aggregator site you might care to consult. Still, for character development and building tension along the way, it is not actually as bad as those scores might suggest. Good enough for a brainless Sunday evening watch, anyway.
