Well I'm ready to celebrate! Why? Because I've now watched my first great movie of this year's Challenge! Now, I've seen some good ones this year, but I'll be damned if this one didn't just blow them out of the water. Wow. And it came after I watched the worst movie I've seen this year, too. I guess it's true that the night is darkest just before dawn.
Ok, so this is another Netflix original movie (look at you, Netflix, making your own good movies now!) It's about a group of college friends who survive a tragedy, and they decide to take a trip years later to reunite and bond and do whatever people do when they go camping. Celebrate their domination over nature or whatever. Of course, these guys are middle aged now, so they're not as spry as they once were, and it doesn't help that they pick the most desolate, isolated, and creepy stretch of woods in the universe to camp in. Soon they're facing a host of problems (in fighting, injuries, old wounds that haven't really healed) even before anything "scary" happens.
These are my favorite types of movies, honestly, where the characters are well developed and they seem to be haunted by life even before anything supernatural comes along. I made some snooty comments about how I could only stand one of the characters, so he was probably going to die first and leave me to deal with the other idiots, but upon further reflection, I actually liked all the characters. They're very different. Luke is more the brooding, hide his emotions type of guy. Phil is more emotional, inside his own head too much for his own good. Dom is the more out of shape, rocking the dad bod, not a fan of camping type. Hutch is the more level headed one (he's the one I liked from the beginning) who stamps out any potential drama and keeps the other guys focused, even after everything starts to fall apart.
The location adds a lot of creepiness. Seriously, I never thought to travel to Norway and go camping in the woods, but I sure as hell am never going to do that after seeing this movie. Yeesh. I also like the slow build here, where it really takes awhile for things to fall apart. Some movies skip that, and then everyone is fighting in the first ten minutes and you wonder why these people ever became friends in the first place, let alone decided to take a trip like this together where they'd be relying on each other for safety. That's the best thing about this movie for me, I get a real sense of their friendship, which makes the events of this movie even more poignant. Overall this movie really creeped me out and tugged at my heartstrings. I wasn't expecting it to be nearly this good, so I was extremely happy with this movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment