I had written positively but concisely about director Ti West’s first film (at comment #4), and I kind of kept an ear to the ground about his subsequent work. And last year, his second work–more restrained, in his words an attempt to strip away all the common tactical conventions of scare movies–got a good review here and a real rave from Scott Foundas here. So I was really looking forward to it.
I liked but didn’t love it; Foundas called it “Old Joy reconceived as a horror movie,” and that’s a fine mash-up pitch. The movie begins at a slow but dread-suffused pace, and takes about thirty minutes to get us well into the woods, wandering with three misplaced urbanites looking to hunt. And it’s never much of a thrill-ride, instead opting for a very deliberate white-knuckle approach to its conventional plot (the hunters start to get hunted). I liked its sense of dread, I loved its HighDef hand-held look, and I loved its disinterest in motive, backstory, resolution. Apparently shot on just over a dime (and produced by Larry Fessenden, who’s maybe the Orson Welles of indie horror films), it’s another solid small alternative for us horror fans not so into the Saw franchise or endless watered-down remakes of East Asian horror.
And it’s not Guy Ritchie, so that’s another plus.