Five friends go to a cabin... how many times have horror movies started out like this before? Okay, so this time it's technically a 'cottage,' but I really don't think that makes much of a difference.
First of all this has to be one of the shortest films I've seen in a long time. Rather than being close to ninety minutes, it's not even close to an hour long - clocking in at about forty-nine minutes.
Therefore, there's not an awful lot to say about a film that's so short. We get a whistlestop tour of the characters and - believe it or not - they're not bad actors and the dialogue they share is actually reasonably believable. Then, before you know it, there's supernatural events going down and it's all over.
Sadly, if there's one word you need to know about this film it's 'budget.' Or lack thereof, I should say. Just because a film doesn't have a lot of money behind it doesn't mean it's going to be bad. Take this one - the actors are just fine, as are their performances. But it is technically a 'horror' film and with something in that genre, you're going to need at least a little bit of cash put by for a scare or two.
So, here the film-makers use every trick in the book to avoid actually showing anything that might involve spending money. Even the sound effects and demonic voices are only played when an actor is facing the other way - I guess that saves on matching up an actor's mouth to the dubbed dialogue.
This could have been a student film for it's overall look, feel, cast and lack of budget. If you're looking for a great film called 'The Cottage' then there's an Andy Serkis film of the same name released back in 2008. It's wonderfully black comedy and it didn't have much of a budget either, but it's a million times better than this one.
