Sombras en el bosque

This is definitely the biggest surprise of the festival so far and without a doubt the best the festival has had to offer. I went into this film with little to no expectations after learning that the director was responsible for the awful vampire flick The Forsaken. and I left pleasantly surprised. The film stars Lori heuring of In Crowd fame as a young mother whose husband has just passed. She moves into an old family home in the mountains with her two daughters next to a mine that is a gravesite to overworked children back in the day. Unlucky for them the children return with a vengeance killing and eating everyone in their path. The film works on many levels. It's well done, suspenseful, it has spots of good cinematography and capable performances by Compton especially. The atmosphere is spooky yet slightly underwhelming, the score is decent and the makeup effects are gruesome and simplistic. The film keeps up a creepy and unsettling tone and the kids themselves with pale skin, torn up lips and hollow eyes are pretty scary and unrelenting. The film is original and inventive without being to artsy or complicated. I can't see this film making it into a wide release without some trimming and slight fine tuning. But they definitely have a good product on there hands and should pursue some type of theatrical distribution. However the theatre in which i saw it in was horrible. The sound was dreadfully messed up which i felt took away from the film majorly and it stopped in the middle because they couldn't center it on the screen which killed the mood a bit. All in all though it was the most satisfying of horrorfests entries maybe because it had the least expectations but nonetheless was a welcome addition to genre films.