Beyond the Woods (2018)

Wonderfully offbeat film!

Redundant and unnecessary.

Captivating movie !

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

So to start i want to point out the good things: The setting was well scouted, a remote cottage. The idea was an interesting enough one. Some of the cinematography was quite nice. The creature design wasn't bad for the micro budget that I'm sure it was, and the way the light emitted as their soul was taken. (Why oh why didn't the writer set this context up early on in the film and develop a survival horror that way?????????). The actress who got cheated on, Lucy? in the film is good.The opening act didn't really work for me as the execution of the idea in the genre of a horror was IMO poor and at times lazy. The opening scene and preceding scenes do not set the tone as a horror or provide any setup as to the stakes, what the pit does, something supernatural maybe, the danger at hand, why this creature takes so long to attack anyone. There were too many scenes sitting around talking about things, and events that we know nothing about from the past or is of no consequence to the story. You could remove the first 30-45 mins of this film and it would not affect the films plot, would maybe work better as a short film without it, with a number of redrafts of the script to improve its structure and execution of the horror elements. The characters didn't seem enthused to be there, a sense of excitement to their break away that goes wrong, it all feels laid back in a bad way, thats one of the reasons I didn't buy their mutual friendship. They all didn't really care much about being in that cottage and meeting up.I get what the writer/director was going for, the 'Alien'/'The descent' type where we see these characters mingle and get a sense that they're good friends, but the dialogue feels like its the actors talking after the camera stops, chit chat you hear at a bus stop/coffee shop, it isn't refined in order to really establish the bond they share or their personalities so you can get invested in them. I didn't buy the fact they were real friends, why that was is a result of the poor design of the script itself. In Alien they have to work together to investigate the distress beacon, and then try to kill the alien, LOTS of tension and character building and something they have to actively do and help each other out inso doing. In The Descent, they have to escape the cave and survive the orc like creatures, again LOTS of tension and character building and something they have to group together and help eachother out inso doing. We have a creature in this film thats after them all and there's no tension and no character building. If they knew there was a beast out side in the beginning of the 2nd act then you could give each of the characters something to actively do and feel their friendship come out, and up the stakes, tension, build character, but no....I'm a little baffled to be honest. It's very uninteresting as to what every character does in this film, lazy writing. You see with films like 'Alien' and 'The Descent' yes they have great dialogue and a sense of friends but what shows that fact is their story design, both films show all the characters working together as a team while maintaining the sense of friendship/bond. That is not done here, in this film they all sit around drinking or walk off alone and get killed and never band together where you feel the bond they have. But even if this film was going for out and out kills with none of what I mentioned, the kills aren't interesting, theres no escalations in their struggle, no raising of tension. The rules to this horror film are not established till the end, even then only some of them, so its very hard to make sense of what to fear, what could happen, and why things happen, thus I was never scared. Other things I began to think of that were not explained at all, outlined below just completely took me out of the movie. I think I found a plot hole. If the pit was located on the other side of the mountain why was their road closed? Why did the road have to be closed? It was not explained very well as to why. Was the pit on the road? It wasn't explained. The writer needed the road to be closed so they had to stay in the cottage, but couldn't they walk to the town for help and shelter if needed? One of the characters did so the morning after they arrived to fetch breakfast. In fact when it's suggested on 2 occasions they should leave, no one says "but the roads are closed". A third time one of the characters proposes they get more beer and another character says "no all the drivers have been drinking" so the roads aren't closed now?....I get the feeling this was a tad bit lazy in the writing. Now, One character did try driving away near the end only to go around in circles, but she was on cocaine, so maybe that had an effect? Then I thought its all this an hallucination, honestly I don't know.Plot hole#2 Why did the creature wait an hour into the film to enter the cottage?That is never explained, and this refers to the rules of the film not being explained, again, lazy writing. Plot hole #3 How did the "environment people" get up to the mine, investigate it and give it the all clear in the time it took the 2 guys to go back inside the cottage and the other guy to phone Pete?Another issue is the lack of tension. The first half of the movie has pretty much zero tension. The "killing"(I say killing but I'm not sure what it was) off of the first character happens quick and tensionless. Every 10-15mins in the film it cuts to a POV shot of a mysterious creature watching them from outside and it never builds, just the same shot of this creature spying on them over and over, theres also shots of mud on the floor in the cottege, it's something but nowhere near the appropriate level of tension needed to be sprinkled in the film, let alone by the half way mark. It provides no escalation in tension and asks the same question of whats the mud about, but the problem is it doesn't build to where "Now I really want to know what the mud is about".These's a scene where one of the characters cheats on his wife to have a threesome with another couple in the cottage, another character sees them going off to do it, this leads to subsequent scenes about this event, she talks to her bf about it and they argue about spilling the beans about it, then she does confront the woman who was involved etc. This movie isn't sure where it wants to go IMO, is it a drama? is it a horror? and that can have bad effects, as Ridley Scott once quoted aptly "If your film is about more than one thing its about nothing at all". Now I know that in the film I referenced above, 'The Descent' the main characters family dies in one of the opening scenes, but thats there to setup her inner turmoil externalised as the chaotic cave a.k.a. her mind stricken with grief in which she must come to terms with never leaving, because the last scene shows her accepting the fact her daughter is gone, thats how you write something like that in to a horror, it serves the character, not the plot. Hopefully the writer/director will take all the constructive criticism here and give us something better.

Had to sign up to IMDB just to put it out there how bad this is!! Wow it's truly awful!! AVOID

The film came up on one of our movie subscriptions and had a rating of 7.8.........film has just finished and we are wondering how anyone can honestly give it more than a 1. Making me question any ratings on films now.

Unfortunately, this is a very poor, very badly directed film with practically no story line. Its a shame as some of the acting is good in parts. I realise the limitations of what is clearly an extremely low budget film, but both the direction, editing and Audio are so poor that it removes any chance of getting immersed into the movie. The early reviews are clearly friends or employees of the film.. its just not good at all!