The Astral Woods

Of course I had never even heard about this 2023 movie titled "The Astral Woods" prior to stumbling upon it here in 2024. And with it being a horror movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to sit down and give writer and director Issac Rodriguez's movie a fair chance.

The storyline from writer Isaac Rodriguez was adequate enough, though the narrative was somewhat slow paced, and that sort of made sitting through "The Astral Woods" a bit of a test of wills. There are elements to the storyline that really prove to be interesting, just a shame that the narrative was so monotonous. You have to sit through about half of the movie, up to the point with the sequence of odd flashing lights, before things start to pick up. And by then, it was sort of too little, too late.

I was not familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, but I will say that the acting performances were good. Leading actress Alexandria Payne (playing Liz) and leading actor Marvin Ritchie (playing Shawn) definitely carried the movie quite well. The movie has a very, very small cast ensemble, so there was additional pressure on the actors and actresses to perform well and carry the movie, and they did so effortlessly.

The cinematography throughout the course of the movie was good. There was lots of nice shots and great locations in the forest, and director Isaac Rodriguez seemed to have an eye for capturing that, adding to the overall mood of the movie.

All in all, not an overly bad attempt at a movie, but personally I wished that it would have been a bit more eventful.

My rating of "The Astral Woods" lands on a four out of ten stars.

I don't get the 4.3 star reviews 😕. The movie is trippy, but well made and definitely not a waste of time. It combines elements of extraterrestrial monsters with the human monster. It leaves it to the viewer to decide which is worse. I find it interesting that a husband and wife of any race could have played the main parts. The point is in depicting man's inhumanity to man. I believe the weird is everywhere; but the main cause for concern will always be people. I could have sworn the husband planned it all with the intent of going off with another woman. Instead, his motives were entirely that of greed.

There's really no existing genre of bad this falls into easily, more a kaleidoscope of reasons it sucks-not the least of which being how much they use a literal kaleidoscope lens.

The plot is actually promising on its own, clever enough to have not been done before. Kind of like an Unsolved Mysteries episode meets The Twilight Zone. But enacted by community theater people.

The whole cast, like all four people, just don't act well at all. I mean it's baaad. And the effects bounce between 2000's SciFi Channel Original to film school guy who found an app with filters he really liked; not ugly in themselves, but just a cluster of angles and hues they couldn't decide on so they used them all.

Most of the bottom tier of my ratings hinge on a few key things, but man this one just runs the gambit.