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 ilderness",
Michael Bassett's follow-up to his World War I
horror movie "Death
Watch" can best be described as
"Lords of the Flies" meets "Friday
the 13th". The film concerns an
intrepid band of delinquent teens who, after one
of their own commits suicide due to bullying, are
sentenced to become one with nature at a remote
island. They are watched over by Jed (British
genre horror mainstay Sean Pertwee), who soon
takes a couple of crossbow bolts to the body and
is dispensed with.
This leaves the delinquents
and a couple of female counterparts whose own
chaperone, the seriously sexy Louise (Alex Reid,
"Arachnid")
has already taken a dive off a cliff (a dog's
teeth attached to her neck, no less) and presumed
dead. With a brutal hunter skilled in ambush and
military Special Forces training after their tail
for reasons unknown (but I'm sure you can figure
it out, or if you can't, the film tells you at the
40-minute mark), the delinquents must put aside
their differences and fight back. Or maybe not.
Actually, the delinquents never really put aside
anything, and instead bicker and threaten to gut
each other throughout much of the movie.
After he secures Louise's
wayward hunting knife, Callum becomes the de facto
alpha male of the group, although the sadistic
Steve (Stephen Wight) and his no-good henchman
Lewis (Luke Neal) might have something to say
about that. Then again, considering that they're
all pretty much a bunch of no-good,
has-nothing-for-society types, I'm putting all my
money on the elusive, dangerous, and
dog-weaponized (you'll see what I mean) hunter
chasing them. If I knew these kids, I
might want to stalk them like animals on a remote
island.
The pure unlikeability of the
cast doesn't harm the film as much as you might
think. One of the more annoying aspects of the
contemporary American teen horror film is how
easily it is to pick out the survivors from the
spam. In the case of "Wilderness", there
really is no sense who is going to die first, or
who will survive. (Which doesn't mean you can't
figure it out; genre vets shouldn't have too much
difficulty identifying the survivors.) And since
the characters are all fair game (to the film's
killer as well as the audience in terms of wanting
them to survive), the fun is watching them getting
knocked off one by one in grisly, bloody ways. In
the film's parlance, the world is better off
without any of these wankers reproducing.
As with his debut "Death
Watch", director Michael J. Bassett continues
to show a willingness to get down and dirty with
his horror. The bloodied, disease-ridden trenches
of World War I in "Death Watch" were
possibly more frightening than the ghost story,
and likewise with the vile nature of the
characters here. The only real innocents in the
film are the girls, but that's only because we
don't know them, and their introduction seems
haphazard at best, superfluous at worst. Except
for one plot where one of the girls takes a liking
to Lewis and vice versa, and begins to pull the
simpleminded henchman away from his skinhead
master Steve, the presence of the girls really
don't do much for the movie in terms of story.
There is much to like about
"Wilderness", including the raw violence
on display. The kills are quite creative, with
bear traps, crossbows, and vicious hunting dogs
that apparently were raised on human meat. Much of
the violence is in your face, with some
superfluous CGI effects to add to the gory
details. The killer himself is quite the dangerous
figure -- that is, until he pulls off his ghillie
suit to start telling the kids why he's stalking
them. At this point, the killer becomes all to
vulnerable, not to mention slow on the draw.
Shouldn't a seasoned hunter and former Special
Forces soldier, who has a crossbow aimed at his
target, be able to shoot the target before the
target can flip a knife and throw said knife at
him? Apparently not.
Despite its "Lord of the
Flies" resemblances, "Wilderness"
is mostly standard Slasher fare. The situation may
be different, the accents are harder to
understand, but there's no denying the Teen
Slasher formula being applied here. As such,
"Wilderness" is not really as original
as it could have been, and its characters are all
one-dimensional personality types. The vile Steve
and his simple-minded henchman Lewis, the rebel
Callum, and the clueless authority figure Jed. The
girls, as mentioned, barely have any personality,
and seem to have been thrown into the mix with the
sole intention of spicing up the bodycount. It's
too bad Alex Reid leaves the movie so quickly,
though…
What does help
"Wilderness" rise above standard genre
fare is its brutality and gritty realism. The
film's unlikeable characters free us from having
to sympathize or care about their well-being, and
the thrill of watching these sad sacks get hunted
down, chewed on by dogs, and bloodied in various
ways is quite entertaining. I have to admit, I've
never really seen a Slasher movie where I wanted everyone
to be hacked to pieces. Bassett has done well in
his sophomore effort, and I wouldn't be surprised
to see a really great horror movie come from him
in the near future.
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