Directed by Roberto De Feo and Paolo Strippoli. Written by De Feo, Strippoli, Lucio Besana, David Bellini and Milo Tissone. Starring Matilda Lutz, Will Merrick, Yuliia Sobol, Peppino Mazzotta, Justin Korovkin, Francesco Russo and Cristina Donadio.
Plot: 5 people, travelling by camper, crash and wake up in a seemingly impenetrable forest where they soon must fight to survive.
While NOT a “classic horror story”, this movie does have it’s merits, although there are too few in the end. We mainly follow Elisa (Lutz) who is actually on her way to her parents house because she is pregnant and her mother wants her to get an abortion. She’s unsure about the abortion though, but her mother has already set her up with an appointment. So she catches a ride through a rideshare app. An RV picks her up and she meets Mark (Merrick) and Sofia (Sobol), a couple on their way to a wedding, Riccardo (Mazotta), a doctor and Fabrizio (Russo), a vlogger who takes video of each of them before driving off.
The trouble starts when Mark, a real dick, gets drunk and takes the wheel from Fabrizio. Later that night, he gets into an accident, crashing the RV into a tree. When they all wake up from the accident however, they find that the whole RV has somehow been moved into a clearing in the middle of a very dense forest. The only thing in their line of sight is a rustic cottage, but they hesitate going inside. Their phones don’t work, the RV won’t start and Mark is now hurt, so Riccardo and Fabrizio go into the woods to look around. They find nothing but a few pig heads on spikes and become concerned. Meanwhile, back at the clearing, the house mysteriously opens and Elisa enters. She finds concerning things as well, like paintings of ritualistic sacrifices.
When they’re all together again, they agree to spend the night in the RV before making anymore decisions, but then they hear a girl screaming from the attic of the cottage and they run inside without much thought. Everything that happens from then on is crazy as hell. But is it any good. Sort of. Well, the acting is awesome, the effects are cool, there’s a bit of humor in the midst of all the carnage and certain aspects of the ending are great. But certain other aspects suck a lot.
They show a dead goat for way longer than is necessary, it’s not a traditionally scary film, when the truth is discovered, the motive doesn’t really fly for us and ultimately there’s just no real point to any of it. You see, there’s a twist towards the end of the film and we think it’s supposed to be very alarming, but it’s just not. It’s actually stupid and a bit silly. So, while we liked it enough to watch it all the way through one time, we probably won’t be watching it again. It was just a little too average.
My score: 46. DJ’s score: 53.
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