Don’t F*** in the Woods

The audacity of this movie opening with an Alfred Hitchcock quote… Even if it was meant as a joke, it doesn’t belong anywhere near this film. 

The movie starts with an opening scene that horror fans have seen the likes of countless times: a sex scene (what else can you expect with a movie titled as it was). I’m not saying the character writing or acting in classic horror films is great, but what was shown on screen for this opening was laughable. Going from the characters making stupid jokes and stale dialogue to the woman stripping for her boyfriend in the middle of the forest. It felt like the writer just wanted to get through the intro without having to do any work to naturally get from point A to point B. Of course this act gets interrupted by the monster, seemingly killing both characters.

 

Speaking of the writer, Don’t Fuck in the Woods was written and directed by Shawn Burkett. I took a quick glance at the other films in his portfolio and it seems like this type of raunchy “horror” film is his go-to schtick. I can’t say too much on the subject because this is the only one of his I’ve seen (this film does have a sequel, so I’ll probably watch and review that for Thursday). 

 

Throughout the first half of the movie, it tries to be tongue-in-cheek and meta, but this falls flat on its face. The characters are far too unlikable and the dialogue is atrocious (in one instance a character is yelling about wanting to go home and another character replies to this with “we need to fucking go home, is what we need to do”). There are plenty of jokes geared towards the classic slasher lineup of archetypal characters, but there doesn’t seem to be any reason to write characters in these boxes because the film doesn’t have anything smart to say about it. 

 

Roman Jossart plays Mac, both the stoner and incredibly annoying character. It doesn’t seem like he makes one comment the entire movie that isn’t about sex. Like, I realize this movie was likely made for the sole purpose of showcasing naked women for the viewer, but c’mon… it’s just too on the mark. And the types of comments he makes are gross and perverted most of the time. I believe it is briefly mentioned in the beginning of the movie that one of the girls he drools over the entire time is his step-sister. Not only is this pointless and meaningless to the plot or story of the movie, but it feels like an unnecessarily gross thing for an already unlikable character to have these motivations.

 

The film did have pretty decent filmmaking in terms of technical ability. Many of my complaints about the filming style and cinematography can probably be argued away using the low budget as reasoning. My one big complaint here is that it felt like scenes were not thought out fully in terms of storyboarding or shot planning. There were a couple times where the characters are looking at something off screen and talking about it, but not once does the camera show what they see. This isn’t done for story purpose or suspense building either, it literally feels like the filmmaker was too lazy to either shoot the reverse angle or show something that could actually be considered interesting. 

 

The middle portion of the movie lulls along with no real direction. Some characters that we don’t know get killed while having sex, the group sits around and talks pointlessly amongst themselves, and there is a weird segment where a man who is meant to be a park ranger pleasures himself to the thought of Lacey (played by Nadia White) stripping in front of him. Once again, I know what this movie’s motivations are, but the writing doesn’t play into that idea enough to not have me shaking my head while watching. 

 

The villain of the movie, a bald monster with sharp yellow teeth, is surprisingly well designed for a movie like this. Although he is not scary, you can suspend your disbelief enough to believe this thing is not just some guy in a halloween costume. And though the costume may be well constructed, the character’s motivations sure aren’t. It may be obvious that the creature goes after and kills young adults in the woods who are having sex, but it’s not clear why. Is it because the monster calls this forest his home and he doesn’t want it tainted? If so, does he kill every animal that mates within the ecosystem, or just ones that don’t ecologically belong? I guess it doesn’t really matter why the slasher is killing its victims, what seems to matter is that there’s blood and breasts filling the screen. 

 

Every character in the movie dies (except for the final girl) including those who don’t partake in sex, but I guess when there’re razor thin motivations for the characters it doesn’t really matter if they stick to them. Obviously the message of this film isn’t that sex is bad and you should be killed if you do it, but is there really meant to be any message at all?

 

One thing I would’ve loved to see more of in this movie is suspense. There are no jump scares, no music buildup to a scary scene, and no atmosphere that made me feel like I was even supposed to be watching a horror movie. The soundtrack was mostly filled with hard rock songs and music that didn’t do anything meaningful for the film. By the time a musical score felt present, it was too late. The ending sequence was the only time the music felt like it was an intentional part of the movie. 

 

I was quite disappointed by the ending. Even though the monster was not established to be impenetrable or even hard to kill, it felt like a flaming arrow was a dumb way for a menacing creature to die, and so easily at that. The end of the movie didn’t leave me satisfied or with elation in my heart that Jane, played by Brittany Blanton, survived the (not super scary) past few nights. By the time it was over I felt ready to be done watching, Unfortunately, I was met with another ten minutes of content the filmmakers felt was necessary to include within the runtime of a feature film: bloopers. It’s not that I don’t appreciate seeing behind the scenes, but I’d prefer if they were not packaged as part of the movie itself. 

 

Final Thoughts:

With long sequences of actions that do nothing to further the story in an already short movie, it seems as though the director just wanted to get naked women in front of his camera rather than tell a compelling horror story.  

For a horror-comedy, Don’t Fuck in the Woods did a very poor job at portraying either genre.

Ratings:

As a Film: 1/10

Personal Enjoyment: 4/10

Within its Genre: 2/10

Fun Scale: 5/10