The Retreat

Alyson Richards' script tells the story of a young lesbian couple who want to reignite the passion in their relationship by going to an off grid retreat in a remote part of Ontario. Instead of finding a long weekend of lovemaking, the couple is captured by a group of homophobic survivalists who make money showing their bloody torture acts on the web.

As far as the horror goes, the plot is just a variation of 100 other movies where city dwellers fall into the hands of insane hillbillies. The couple is suffering from the same "need a way back to each other" dynamic they do in all these films. In this case, the hillbillies have a special kind of hate, but they aren't much different than the one in the other movies.

What's different is how angry the women are at the people who attacked them. They don't really want to be rescued by the police. They want to waste the monsters and leave the world a safer place. What's also different is how uniting against the common enemy reunites the women, and makes them a stronger couple.

This movie is about the needless political attacks on the LGBTQ community, and the legacy of pain and anger it leaves. The whole point of the movie is that the women are made stronger by uniting and vanquishing the threat.

As a horror movie, it's mediocre and made on a shoestring. The lighting is so dark it's hard to watch on a tv and the scares aren't very scary. The scares aren't really there to scare the viewer anyway.

As a political statement, the scares just make the viewer angry, which is what Richards wants. She is telling the world that there are lots of people who would cheer for the deaths of LGBTQ people. She wants the world to know "homophobia" is a nice word for "hate." She doesn't believe LGBTQ people are safe as long as homophobia exists, and she is right about it,

If you have to depend on constant darkness to make a horror movie, it means the plot isn't good enough to carry it. I'm just about 40 minutes into the movie. Can't see a thing.

I wish it lasted a bit longer. It's not anything we haven't seen before but it was executed properly, what do you want more from this sub-genre?

Protagonists are very likable, especially Renee. Humor is present occasionally but isn't forced. I wish it had the same directorial angle as in the second half of the movie because the first half is kinda messy.

One of the negatives is that it's way too dark during some scenes in first half of the film, I watched it on highest resolution in complete darkness and still couldn't see what was going on.

Soundtrack is good, it adds to some already good scenes. Pace is tailored for its duration. Granted, characters haven't always made the smartest decisions (during the first half) but then again it's a slasher.

The ending was super enjoyable and gave me chills. 6/10.

When I sat down to watch this 2021 thriller/horror movie titled "The Retreat" from writer Alyson Richards and director Pat Mills, I must admit that my expectations weren't all that high, as the movie had managed to acquire a rating of 3.6 stars here on IMDb.

But still, it being a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I managed to find the time to watch it.

And sure, "The Retreat" was a watchable movie, albeit a very mundane and generic one at that, especially for a movie such as this, set in the trapped in the wilderness and stalked by killers genre. If there is such a thing.

The storyline was pretty straight forward, but it suffered heavily from being rather generic and predictable. Sure, it was watchable and entertaining enough, but the storyline does leave lots to be wanted. The movie had potential to be much more than what director Pat Mills managed to make it into.

The acting in the movie was adequate. Now, a movie such as "The Retreat" is not the type of movie heavily reliant on Shakespearian performances, so don't consider yourself in for some mind-blowing and amazing acting performances here. Sure, I will say that the acting was okay for the movie, but that was about it.

The overall feel to the movie was just bland. Writer Alyson Richards didn't bring anything new to the genre, and just played it safe by following a strict 'how-to-make-a-trapped-in-the-wilderness-stalked-by-killers' blueprint. So everything you see in "The Retreat" is something that has been done and seen countless times before in other movies of the same type, and more often done better than what was done here in "The Retreat".

The movie was just rather devoid of ghastly things to keep the motivation going. I mean, there just was limited amounts of gore and violence in the movie, something which could have helped promote the overall enjoyment of "The Retreat" somewhat.

It felt a little bit too scripted and too much of an easy ride for the two main characters in the movie as they went through what was supposed to be a harrowing ordeal of being trapped in the wilderness and stalked by killers. They just seemed to stroll through the events a bit too easily. And that made for a rather mundane movie experience, because it was lacking that element of terror, dread, hardship and actually being at risk.

While I managed to sit through the entire movie, I must say that "The Retreat" was actually better than I had anticipated. But don't get me wrong here, because I am not saying that "The Retreat" was an outstanding movie experience. Hardly so. Nay, "The Retreat" was watchable, yes, but it was just too bland and generic actually.

My rating of "The Retreat" lands on a very mediocre five out of ten stars.

Renee (Tommie-Amber Pirie) and her girlfriend Valerie (Sarah Allen) are going on a retreat to a cabin in the woods. At the local store, Val gets hit on by James (Aaron Ashmore). There are suspicious happenings. Their car is gone. Their hosts are a couple of gay guys and they've been murdered by a masked man dressed in camo hunting gear.

This is a simple horror film. The gay targeting is somewhat interesting but the movie doesn't fully exploit it. I would have Renee try harder with the bear trap. The movie should spend more time with that scene to build up tension. It just struggles to build high tension. The actors are fine and there are some good ones here. The filmmaking is perfunctory. It's trying to be torture porn but It's not good enough. I don't think the director is a horror aficionado and it shows.