Blackwoods (2001)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Matt is haunted by the death of a girl from a car accident he caused years ago. Matt was drunk and as he reached for the car radio, he struck the girl as she crossed the road. The guilt that he feels has altered his sense of reality, making Matt's life a mystery full of shadows and phantoms. Now, years later Matt goes away for weekend with his new girlfriend Dawn. After a wild session of lovemaking, Dawn goes for a walk. While she is away a strange man with an ax comes into the motel room and attacks Matt. After that incident Matt goes into the woods, looking for Dawn. There he encounters Dawn's family who tie him down and put him on trail for the murder of the girl years before. They find him guilty and he is sent back into the forest to be hunted down by the family. The deeper Matt runs into the forest the farther his mind is lost to the Blackwoods.Opie's brother is in this. That says it all.

Forget the plot and characters, Blackwoods is a movie about trendy, flashy, cinematic fads that lacks any coherent rhyme or reason behind its execution. The film is directed by Uwe Boll, a man who has seen many great effects created in great films by great directors, and he is eager to recreate those sensations in his own movie. Too eager. Way too eager. Early in the film, Matt glances out the window and sees his girlfriend, Dawn, chatting with some guy on the street, and Uwe Boll quick cuts to 3 different shots of Matt (think Hitchcock's the Birds) and we hear sinister music. Why? Because Boll can.Actually, the first glimpse at Matt is through pulsating blackness where he paces back and forth and fiddles with a knife as though having just committed murder or something, which interestingly, the film immediately abandons as he "wakes up." Driving down the road, Matt reaches for the radio, and Boll unleashes a series of flashcuts showing snow, woods, blood, bodies, and a shattered windshield as if the radio somehow play into Matt's enigmatic past. Later in the film, a waitress gives Matt a dirty look, and she gets an evil cue on the soundtrack. Later still, Matt and his girlfriend of three weeks get pulled over and the cop's vehicle also gets its own evil music. When the cop doesn't appear after two seconds, Matt gets out, and Dawn dives into the backseat to hide. Matt gets close to the cop's SUV, and calls out, "Hello?" And boo! The Sheriff is right behind him! Cue the sinister music again! All within the opening twenty minutes.I get the feeling that when Uwe Boll wants to drop subtle hints that someone should run up to 7/11 for cigarettes he writes a note on poster board, hires a guy to dress up as a giant cigarette and deliver a singing telegram, paints an ad on all the billboards within 20 miles, does a chalk drawing on the driveway, phones it in to a live radio broadcast, and has an airplane write a message in the clouds. And you can just sense the movie struggling with all its might to slip in innuendos, "hinting" at the "surprise" ending, all the while trying to mislead at the same time. It has the effectiveness of, "Oh my God! Look over there! Is that the good year blimp?! Oh wait! Where did the handkerchief go? It disappeared! Magic!" The story surrounds the young couple as they journey to a remote location in the woods to introduce Matt to Dawn's parents because in the movies nothing bad ever happens in isolated locations where no one can hear you scream. After an overly suspicious setup that works overtime isolating Dawn from the rest of the world (save for one lonely diner scene) – and let's not forget the constant bombardment of flashbacks showing snowy woods, blood, a body, a shattered windshield, hospitals – Dawn mysteriously disappears. Around this time, an axe murderer shows up to wreck havoc in their hotel room, and that guy vanishes as if it were all in Matt's twisted mind. Oh, did I mention the guy who "asked Dawn for directions" previously (you know, the one who inspired the Birds cuts), turns up at their hotel before the axe murderer appeared? After the hotel clerk and local Sheriff write Matt off as a nutcase, Matt vows to prove his story and goes to the house of Dawn's parents … right up the street from the hotel. And peeking through a window, he discovers Dawn talking with the homicidal axe maniac, or as she calls him "brother." In the room, we can see the entire family, and apparently Dawn got all the good looks and everyone else got … umm … well, never mind.Around this time, the flashbacks have become progressively longer, progressively more revealing, and they still appear at an overabundant frequency. Matt apparently ran over a pedestrian and a tree. The tree survived; the pedestrian did not. Presently, the Blackwoods hillbillies are putting Matt on trial for the murder of Molly, the poor pedestrian whose face remains forever hidden in the flashbacks. And as his grim end approaches, the Sheriff vows to get to the bottom of it all because something doesn't quite click and "that kid seemed strangely familiar." And it's a race for the Sheriff to unlock the mystery of the Blackwoods and … catch up with the audience who figured it out 20 minutes ago.Unlike the film, I'll not explicitly spell out the ending. I'll assume anyone reading this has the intellect and capacity to figure it out for themselves based on the events I've described. I will, however, say that once Blackwoods reveals its dark secret, it doesn't shut up about it using extensive explicit imagery and not one but two monologues. "Yeah, dude, when you were looking at the Good Year Blimp, which wasn't really there (it was a 'distraction'), I hid the handkerchief in my pocket! See? Here it is! Wait, let me show you in slow motion."Interestingly, the film's technical merits ironically builds a strong case that its creators, like the main character, are delusional drunks. Take for example a shot early on where the Sheriff turns to talk to a waitress, and his nose falls outside the frame. Or perhaps when Mat talks to Dawn (hiding in the backseat) after they get pulled over, and the camera wobbles as if the cameraman had held that heavy thing too long and can't quite keep it steady anymore. Or the choppy slow motion that looks more like the DVD player is screwing up than style. Or the … ah, crap I'm at IMDb's word limit.

Well, it's been about a year since I saw this movie, but since I just recently saw 'House of the Dead' (Uwe Boll's newest 'Piece of Art') I thought to comment on it now.I really don't know why he made the movie or what he wanted to tell me with it. In my opinion it plainly sucked, sorry. The actors didn't really do a good job and the story was plain lame. The 'Fight Club' turn at the end was pretty unbelievable, too. Don't go and see it, it's certainly not worth it!

Just about everything in this movie makes sense, but only in the end, when the puzzle is finished and you know the whole truth behind everything. Although some parts of the ending is predictable for people who've seen "The Sixth Sense" or "Fight Club", but the atmosphere and the message of this movie are genuinely unique. All in all a great psychological study of the way humans correspond to shocking experiences and punish themselves for their own faults. Go see it, if you can! 9 out of 10!