Review of Wild Country (2005) by Julie G — 10 Apr 2009

It's really too bad that this film didn't deliver, because director Craig Strachan and the rest of the filmcrew seemed to have put a lot of effort in this film, though that may be a bad sign considered how lackluster Wild Country truly is.

Clocking in at barely over an hour, Wild Country is set in Scotland and is about a 16 year old girl who gives birth to a baby and is forced to give it up at the guidance of her priest. Several months later, the young girl and 5 other friends (including the boy who knocked her up) go on a youth camping trip where as luck would have it, they come across an abandoned baby, which they rescue from a wild werewolf that starts chasing and killing them one by one.

The ides seems like a solid foundation to build upon, however several things hurt this film. Strachan purposely let the entire cast keep their heavy Scottish accents, phrases, and dialect in the film in hopes of showing the real culture of that region.

I am totally 100% for that, but it was so hard to understand them that I finally turned the subtitles on and then was completely confused when they used phrases and words that I wouldn't get. All in all, that problem was only minor, especially given the fact that nearly the entire movie is set in the dark.

..literally. There was barely any lighting for me see what was going on most of the time. The werewolf and gore sequences (when I could make them out) were nice, especially the killing scenes that happened onscreen (the frequent offscreen killings only managed to piss me off).

Overall, I was very surprised by how unentertaining this film wound up being. I had had very high hopes for it.