The Woods Are Real

This got passed around a lot the last few days, so i decided to check it out. Only 80 minutes - why the hell not? Starts cool - some interesting dialogue- i think i recognized one of the actors right away, maybe even another. Felt almost like this older indie movie called Compliance a few years back. Then it really starts to open up - once they get called to go upstate - cabin, yada yada. But then - to it's credit - the film gets kinda wild and weird. Not my cup of tea honestly - the philosophizing got to be sometimes to much for me - but the acting was honestly kinda great throughout and it really had a cohesive look. I recommend for folks looking for more a creepy meditation than anything else.

It's true that not all horror films serve as mouthpieces for Christianity-there are even a few examples that condemn church leaders-but nearly any horror film that touches on the supernatural will either condemn the faithless ( The Conjuring, The Rite ), frame non-Jesus religions as spooky (The Wicker Man, The Exorcist, Sinister ), or claim that Biblical prophecy is coming to pass (Legion, The Omen). Even slasher films with no ties to religion often dabble in moralistic tropes against drugs, premarital sex, or doing anything the least bit salacious.

But this was a dull movie with no horror scenes. Simply horrible.

This may be a finalist for worst movie of all time. Now, there are two kinds of bad movies: so bad they're good and so bad they're unwatchable. This is firmly in the latter camp. Two of the most fraudulent, dislikable people on earth go to a cabin in the woods to better understand how it changed their friend's life. It COULD have worked. It would have required the filmmaker to have fun with the idea. He did not. Every second of this pretentious crap is deadly serious. One gets the feeling that the filmmaker has never had a moment of fun in his life and wants his audience to be just as miserable as he is. Don't fall for it, don't bother watching this sorry mess.

Don't waste your time with this one. It sells itself as something else, has zero character development, random "unsettling" events that we're supposed to accept as mysterious or nefarious, and for what? There's no payoff. You waste your time waiting for an incredibly weak ending that is nothing more than someone's delirious mess of a sermon from their own personal mount.

Maybe you're the type who enjoys being pounced on with a surprise sermon, but it doesn't matter: you'll feel assaulted by an awful story with a paper thin plot, zero direction, and barely an ounce of imagination.

The god botherers should stick to trolling random social media threads if they can't even be honest about what they're selling.

Lat time I watched a christian film tricking you to watch it under the guise of horror/thriller, I sat through was just as empty and boring as this one. Fortunately I was doing some painting whilst this was on in the background.

At no point at all was it interesting, captivating or clever. Somehow I waited if there would be a twist. Nope. Just christians trying to reel you in under false pretences.

The camera work was quite good actually, the acting was dismal, even though the actors didn't have much to work with, so they did their best.

Why not make an overtly christian movie, with colour, love, proper story lines, teaching whilst being entertaining?

I watched some overtly christian films as a kid, like Jesus of Nazareth and found them highly interesting. Not enough to make me believe but I didn't get bored and it was entertaining historically. Plus I knew what it was about. No tricks needed.

Happy to say that I am still a non believer and even more so after this really bad excuse of veiled preaching. I don't like being duped.

Please just own up to it, put into the title or the description, that this is a christian film. I wonder why the makers of this movie haven't learned from their own film's meaning?