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DARK WOODS
Produced and Directed by Jake Daniels
Written by Timothy Whitfield, Royce Freeman, and Chris Xavier
Edited by Timothy WhitfieldAs a follow-up release from Timberwolf Entertainment, Jake Daniels' DARK WOODS, is superior to their debut title SUMMER'S END: THE LEGEND OF SAMHAIN in terms of technical execution. Like its predecessor, DARK WOODS is a return to the 80's slasher picture, only this time minus the supernatural elements of SUMMER'S END.
Written by SUMMER'S END director Timothy Whitfield, DARK WOODS suffers from the same type of bland dialogue and uninspired story as SUMMER'S END. Set in an abandoned army base, a group of young sex-crazed college students go about renovating the place into a summer camp. One by one, the college kids are picked off by a camouflage-wearing, hockey mask-sporting, machete-wielding madman. To the killer's credit, that madman can do things with his machete that I've only seen in Japanese Steakhouses.
Whitfield opts to stay away from the SCREAM route of self-reflexive horror and plays his story straight. There are plenty of opportunities to try something new with the genre, but Whitfield chooses to rely on standard cliches. Just because one is paying homage to a fan-favorite genre doesn't mean one has to be at the mercy of its conventions. If something was tired 20 years ago, how do you think it's going to play out now?
My biggest problem with Whitfield's storytelling style is his reliance on convenience. There's a scene in particular that forced me to watch the remainder of the movie on fastforword. A young gentleman is on the road trying to find his girlfriend who was killed just prior by Mr. Camouflage Machete. Boyfriend happens to see an unfamiliar car along side the road and decides to check things out. He peers into the cars, sees a familiar item (it's been an hour since I've watched the movie and I can't even remember what the item was - it could have been a hair scrunchy for all I know), yells her name, looks into the car, and runs off into the woods only to find her body and subsequently get ginsued by Mr. Machete. For those that didn't get all that... Happens to find the car. Happens to find his girlfriend's mystery items. Happens to run off in the woods in the same direction as his girlfriend. Happens across her body. This happens to be lazy screenwriting. I strongly suggest that Mr. Whitfield do a second draft when writing his screenplays to avoid these types of structural flaws.
Not to totally come down on Mr. Whitfield, there were a few elements of characterization that I liked. In this area he's improved greatly since SUMMER'S END. I also liked the final revelation concerning the killer's identity; very FRIDAY THE 13TH without being a direct clone. Elements like this are what Mr. Whitfield needs to focus his future stories around, while they are still an homage to the films he's inspired by, they still have a unique flavor making DARK WOODS its own entity. Remember the SCREAM-style return to Crystal Lake sequence from JASON X? Still the same series as it was 20 years prior, the newer movie just presented the material in a fresh way. If you want to make slasher flicks that get noticed, JASON X is how you've got to do them. Don't be afraid to make your movies fun.