Review of Timber Falls (2007) by Steve Z — 08 Aug 2008

There's horror and there's horror. Timber Falls takes the most well-worn template known to the genre - goofy young lovers get lost in the woods and end up getting tortured by inbred cretins - and does the unthinkable: makes it about as terrifying as an episode of Heartbeat. The only really horrifying thing is how stupid and boring the characters are.

Mike (Josh Randall) and Sheryl (Brianna Brown) set off on a hiking weekend in the idyllic hills of West Virginia. Told by a helpful ranger to stick to one of just two patrolled trails, they immediately make a series of decisions that prove their utter stupidity. I'd call them morons if I didn't think that was an insult to morons everywhere.

First of all, they wander off the approved path simply because a local nutcase tells them it'll be OK. Sure enough, it takes just minutes for them to be set upon by a gang of redneck locals. Even after this, the thought of retracing their steps never occurs to them. After inexplicably getting rid of their gun, they set up camp miles from anywhere - just long enough for Sheryl to get abducted while swimming naked and Mike to walk backwards into a bear trap in broad daylight.

By this stage, I wanted to kill them myself.

Thankfully, they end up captured by cartoon-y ultra-religious - and, er, insane - childless couple Ida (Beth Broderick) and Clyde (Nick Searcy) who, along with hideously burned henchman Deacon (Sascha Roseman), are horrified that the couple have had sex before marriage. So they make Mike and Sheryl marry in a bizarre ceremony in a cabin crammed with torture implements and foetuses in jars - and then order them to have sex to produce them a child. If not, they will torture them.

Leaving aside the contradiction that people who are horrified by the sexual act are ordering the offenders to carry on offending (haven't they heard of adoption?), this one's a no-brainer, surely. The couple could string it out for months, cooking up an escape plan, right? But, no, Mike and Sheryl refuse to co-operate. In effect, they opt for torture.

Ida and Clyde are dim characters and too grotesque as caricatures to work as a parody of religious fundamentalists.

They are also boring and relentlessly nasty. But a few minutes of Randall and Brown's zero-chemistry, brain-dead partnership will have you rooting for the bad guys. The twist at the end defies logic and all the laws of common sense.

Sub-TV movie director Tony Giglio, who co-wrote the witless script with Dan Kay, obviously gets off on seeing women tortured and is hoping his audience will, too. If you don't, there's nothing to see here.