Writer: Anthony Jaswinski
Released: 2008
Labels: Slasher|2000's
A group of young executives go on a team building weekend for some paint balling in the woods. They inadvertently stumble into a territory owned by a strange religious cult that protect their privacy at all costs.
"Backwoods" - It was a totally baffling experience watching this derivative pile of nonsense. Not only have the film-makers put together a poorly constructed collection of cliches and copied already tired ideas, they have managed to do so with such an incredible flair for getting it wrong that it goes so far beyond being a bad-but-funny movie that it induces frustration, and at times rage, at their ineptitude.
The movie starts with the obligatory early kill to introduce the slasher... oh dear, it's yet another inbred "family" with the obligatory "Leatherface-a-like" hulking son. Then we meet our "heroes" and ALL these young execs are such hateful characters with no redeeming features that you can't wait for the killing to start, but you're gonna have to, because first we have about 30 minutes of these idiots readying themselves for the paint-balling and camping, including a stop at a store/bar run by a hillbilly type and frequented by a couple of bikers that were supposed to be mean and scary (for no apparent reason) but just looked like a couple of perfumed wrestlers.
There is the introduction of a relationship back-story with a couple of the characters but you won't care, and neither did the writers it seems because it remains totally ignored from that point on. Then we have some camping and swimming to watch. Then the paint-ball "action" starts, one of the teams is given bright blue camouflage fatigues to wear.....IN THE WOODS!!! (the term "woods" is used lightly, it looks more like a recreational park with well maintained pathways used for hiking or perhaps bicycling).
A deserted farmhouse is discovered (yawn) it's not particularly creepy or scary but someone still says "what is this place?" as if they were looking at a funfair made from animal parts and Lego, (this reaction is to remind the viewer that it's supposed to be a scary movie). Finally the crazy killer family arrive and do a bit of killing and kidnapping to paintball Team A (oddly it's the team in the green camo that gets their attention first). Team B (the more annoying of the two teams) hear the screams, grab their trusty paint guns (yup) and run to help. This is where the film stops being a bad slasher-family-in-the-woods movie and becomes plain incomprehensible.
The "family" are in fact religious cult / hillbilly / underground dwelling / drug manufacturing / inbred mutants living on ex-military land, who think intruders are agents from the government. Not only that but they want the girls to breed with (dunno why). The film sets itself up like a torture pic for a while with team-whatever put in cages but nothing much comes of that either, in fact the most brutal thing that goes on down there is a killing that involves a jailer confiscating a captives inhaler during an asthma attack so he suffocates (barbaric!).
There really is no gore or horror to speak of. The heroes' escape is lengthy and dull and most of the time they seem to get no further than just behind the tree outside the front door. All the (dull) deaths that follow are either down to the idiot's own stupidity or are ridiculous acts of selfless blaze-of-glory heroic bullsh**. There is nothing new or exciting here at all. Rent one of the related picks shown at the bottom of this page and avoid this movie at all costs.
Backwoods tagline is "Nature has a Dark Side"..... yeah? well so do my butt cheeks but at least I have the decency not to call them entertainment and show them to the general public.
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