DON’T GO IN THE WOODS (2010)

Directed by Vincent D’Onofrio
Written by Vincent D’Onofrio, Sam Bisbee, Joe Vinciguerra
Starring Matt Sbeglia, Cassandra Walker, Soomin Lee, Nick Thorp, Casey Smith, Jorgen Jorgensen, Gywnn Galitzer, Alyssa Jang, Kira Gorelick, Nuriya Almaya, Ali Tobia, Kate O’Malley & Eric Bogosian

So do you remember that scene in ANIMAL HOUSE when John Belushi grabs the guitar from the hippie singing to the girls on the stairs and smashes it into bits? Well, if you laughed your ass off at that scene, you will definitely find this film satisfying.

Thing is, I don’t think that’s the point director/writer Vincent D’Onofrio is trying to make with this horror/”musical”. DON’T GO IN THE WOODS attempts to blend horror and song together seamlessly and meaningfully, but ends up unintentionally leaving me in stitches.

An emo band tries to get back to their roots goes into the woods in order to write a new album’s worth of music. The especially moody bandleader gets super pissed when the band takes things less than seriously by bringing drugs, liquor, and cell phones and confiscates them all. Soon after, the band leader has more to whine about when a gaggle of girls show up to swoon and clap along to the music. And then, as luck would have it, a guy with a sledge hammer shows up to kill them all.

DON’T GO IN THE WOODS seems well-intentioned. D’Onofrio is skilled with the camera, capturing a lot of great scenery and making what is, at its core, a repeated scene of kids singing around a campfire, digestible. The thing is, the film is an uneven mess. For the first hour ten, this film is a series of songs played back to back to back around a campfire and sitting on a log in the woods with about five minutes of story peppered throughout hinting that there is a killer in the woods stalking them. Two campers are killed early on, but for the bulk the film it’s mostly skinny jeans-ed kids strumming a guitar and wailing in the woods. D’Onofrio attempts to tell the story of these kids through song, giving each of them angst-ridden scenarios in order for the audience feel for his cast before the slaughter in the end. Instead, since the songs aren’t as soul-searing as the band wants to make you think they are and since most of the cast are pretty one dimensional, you end up rooting for the killer more than usual to shut these kids the hell up. The cast are either played as dopers, groupies, total pricks, or idiots—idiots especially as the band leader smashes all of their cell phones while another for no apparent reason hacks his shoe in two with a hatchet then whines when he steps on a piece of glass in his bare feet. Of course, the band was too busy making sure their hair looked like they didn’t comb it to think to bring a first aid kit.

The portrayal of pretty much every woman here is especially annoying. Not only do each of them attempt to yodel their Christina Aguilera-ed version of the song the band just sang five seconds ago around the bonfire to fit the situation they are in, but they are also simply cast as distractions and groupies. A song is sung by one of the band members; one of the undistinguishable blondes sits at the lead singer du song’s feet and purrs “Was that song about me?”, then the band member either spurns or humps them. I actually shouted, “YES!” when the sledge hammer man clonks one female warbler in mid-holler towards the end of the movie. You will too.

The effects here are pretty rudimentary but effective. D’Onofrio isn’t afraid to shed a lot of blood, and the gore definitely redeems the film in the final moments. There are a few details that left me scratching my head, though. The killer uses a sledgehammer, but somehow body parts are severed and strewn throughout the forest for folks to find at just the right time. There’s a nice tracheotomy scene with a wind keyboard which is inspired. The killer himself/itself is left ambiguous throughout, with the only explanation being a campfire tale of the Wendigo, a monstrous legend stemmed from cannibalism. But I’m not sure how the sledgehammer fits into the legend.

D’Onofrio was trying something interesting here and this is a nice looking film. But just as music videos are often bereft of anything but literal, surface level emotion, so is this film. Maybe D’Onofrio would make some great music videos, but he fails to make any of these people we are supposed to care for matter for anything other than upping the body count. One could argue by the way the killer dispatches the cast that D’Onofrio is taking just as much glee in killing these douchebags as the audience, but I think that he wants this film to resonate in the end and be up-ended in a wave of irony at the way things turn out. The final scene where the band leader stops in the middle of being chased by the killer in order to strum the perfect song he’s been working on for the bulk of the film is both hilarious and reeks of pretention. It seems D’Onofrio wants us to be heartbroken to see these just-blossoming flowers plucked just as their glorious music begins to shine through. But honestly, in the end, I couldn’t wait for the hammer to fall on these whiners.

DON’T GO IN THE WOODS takes itself way too seriously to the point that it becomes laughable. Other than the scenes where the women sing, this is basically a campfire hootenanny that forgot what it was advertised to be until the last ten minutes, then rushed a killer in there to fulfill the promise at the very, very end. It’s as if a straight up film following a band trying to make it wasn’t interesting enough so they threw in horror because they knew it was much more commercially profitable.

Though the songs weren’t half bad, I’d recommend listening to the soundtrack rather than watching DON’T GO IN THE WOODS. If emo/folksy music is your taste, DON’T GO IN THE WOODS might hold your interest, but the cast makes it hard to root for anyone but the killer.

Check out the trailer here!!