Promenons-nous dans les bois

A group of college aged actors are hired to perform a play at a millionare's house for his son's birthday party. However, they soon start to fall prey to a killer dressed in a wolf suit. Magnificently directed horror flick makes Dario Argento look like an amateur. The whole cast is extremely photogenic and there are some seriously sexy moments. The film also scores some huge scares. However, the script is only average at best. Still, essential viewing for any horror fan.

Rated R; Extreme Violence, Sexual Situations, Nudity and Profanity.

Based on the title, DVD-cover image, casting choices and short synopsis, "Deep in the Woods" looks like a dumb and formulaic backwoods slasher/survival horror flick. And for about 50% that is exactly the case, but for the remaining 50% it's a surprisingly stylish, experimental and unsettling Goth-horror tryout. Writer/director Lionel Delplanque does a handful of brilliant things with the cinematography and thought up a few downright and genuinely disturbing aspects (the creepy little kid!), but unfortunately he also wanted to be too "American" when it comes to the rest of the screenplay. The teenage protagonists are utmost annoying stereotypes and they do the stupidest things imaginable, like going into the woods at night after they received specific warning there's a maniac killer on the loose. The deaths/killings are rather mundane and people keep appearing and disappearing without any proper explanation, but that about concludes the bad news. "Deep in the Woods" features a strong opening sequence and the interesting idea to process the Little Red Riding Hood fairy-tale into the script. Five obnoxious wannabe actors are heading out to a mansion the middle of a desolated forest, where they are hired to perform a private theater show to the grandson of an eccentric old man. Upon their arrival, they find out the old man is a crazed wheelchair-bound psycho with oppressed homo-erotic desires, his loyal servant is a perverted taxidermist and the grandson is a silent and autistic but terrifying child with a major trauma. Soon after their (abysmal) live performance on stage, the group find themselves pursued by a lunatic killer in a leather (!) wolf costume. Delplanque manages to insert several suspense-laden moments during the cat & mouse game and the climax, although preposterous and over-the-top, is quite exhilarating. It's very strange that Lionel Delplanque wasn't offered a one-way ticket to Hollywood after this (like his colleagues Alexandre Aja, Xavier Gens and Pascal Laugier), because his competent directing is undoubtedly film's biggest trump. I guess the script was ultimately too weak for him to become noticed.

This "film" should be presented at all levels of film courses especially the scripting ones because it has so many flaws in plot and lacks so many parts of a feature film that one can hardly imagine better tool for explaining what should the story for the movie be like.I don't understand that high ranking it got and some comments about other levels of depths of the story made me laughing loud.After first 20 minutes I was angry at myself because I picked the film for my friends but then I was enjoying every illogical turn of the plot, dialogue and acting of characters under given circumstances just for fun.I have no doubt that had Monty Python been still in action they wouldn't let this one pass unnoticed-one of the most absurd charcters was the policeman/detective -when he first appeared on screen -just what was this? At the end one of my friends added "and now there will be a shot on a raven and finish" and after it happened just that we laughed through the credits maybe trying to forget how dull and boring this french "masterpiece" was.

For the first time, France's broaching a subject which made the reputation and the success of famous movies such as "Scream" or "I know what you did last summer": the serial murder. Here, the serial murder is in keeping with a French nursery rhyme that deals with the big bad wolf. Unfortunately, this movie which is besides Delplanque's first movie is far from being successful. His movie takes back too many elements that became clichés of horror movies like the raven that is synonym of a bad omen, the haunted house and the serie of sinister-looking characters. But above all, the movie doesn't succeed in hiding an obvious lack of inspiration, especially the dialogs that aren't very worked and it doesn't hesitate in borrowing scenes from other movies. I think about "the blair witch project" when one of the actors is disappearing into the woods and about "psycho" with the murder under the shower and moreover Delplanque's making is empty and hollow. Sometimes the movie becomes ridiculous due to a few scenes like the actors' show played in front of Axel de Fersen and Nicolas and a few characters: the cop who turns up at the most awkward moment hasn't got a cop's head and mind. As far as the little boy Nicolas is concerned, he is bad used. During an important part of the movie, he stays still, the vacant look he seems scared by the big bad wolf and he doesn't say a single word. The little actor that epitomizes him hadn't had very much work to do.... Nevertheless Fraçois Berléand is quite convincing in his role of sinister-looking character even if the movie doesn't expand his feelings to Wilfried, one of the young men. I noticed that Berléand seems to feel love to him.... At last, the movie succeeds, sometimes, in creating an ounce of suspense and doubt in the spectator's mind: who is the big bad wolf? Who is responsible of all the murders? You'll know the answers at the end of this listless and dull movie....

I've seen plenty of horror films in many different languages. Sure, it looks excellent and the direction is good but the script and plot line sucks big time. It doesn't stand out from the crowd one iota. Just 'cos its french doesn't mean its any better than the american dross. Watch something else instead.