With the release of Blair Witch, we look at some classic and less-known horror films that exploit our fear of the backwoods
In the wake of the release of writer Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingard‘s deluxe second sequel to 1999’s found footage, deep-woods horror classic The Blair Witch Project (read Alan Cerny’s positive review here and my less favorable critique here), we thought we’d take a look at a handful of both classic and lesser known forest-set fright flicks that similarly exploit our fear of things that lurk in the forest.
We all know why the backwoods horror film works, why it affects us. Or at least why it affects those of us who are more accustomed to the creature comforts of city living. The woods are wild. Untamed and full of as much danger as beauty. For many of us, the woods are an alien world. And horror films have long exploited this fear of being removed, isolated, cut off from society, devoid of technology and left to our own devices.
It’s a given that those that call the woods their home – both animal and human – might not want us there. They might see us as hostile, a threat. Or maybe, they just see us as prey. Maybe they see us as easy pickings, a crime that they can get away with.
Or maybe there’s something darker, more ancient, lying dormant in those woods, waiting to wake up and drag us down with it.
Either way, the woods are scary and the trees have teeth.
So take a bite out of these nine brutal and unsparing cautionary tale of evil explorations. Watch these films and you might toss away your sleeping bag and not ever leave your house again…
Horror in the Woods
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Deliverance (1972)
John Boorman's quintessential survivalist drama/horror classic is so much more than a paean to backwoods sodomy. That horrific scene of sexual assault certainly sets the terror of the picture in motion, but at its core, Deliverance is a story of a man (Jon Voight) standing up to the apathy and brutality of nature and in turn changing himself, for better or worse. Essentially, all the backwoods horror films that followed - including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I Spit on Your Grave et al - owe their guts to Deliverance.
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Rituals (1977)
Canadian rip-off of Deliverance (shot as The Creeper) with a great cast (Lawrence Dane, Hal Holbrook, Robin Gammell) sees a group of doctors on a wilderness adventure who fall prey to a pack of inbred psycho-killers from Hell. Violent, well-acted and strong, the film doesn't have the poetry of Deliverance but still, many horror fans cite it as the superior experience. We're not among them, but this is still a quality film.
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Just Before Dawn (1981)
Director Jeff Lieberman made this after his cult films Squirm and Blue Sunshine and it was barely released and quickly forgotten. Early home video transfers were so dark that you could barely make out the action but the subsequent DVD remaster reveals a scary, bright and atmospheric riff on Deliverance that works. with two mutant inbred killers chasing down their prey in the deep woods. Scary stuff with an amazing Brad Fiedel (Fright Night, The Terminator) electronic score.
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The Evil Dead (1981)
What's left to say about Sam Raimi's cabin-in-the-woods classic that hasn't already been said? With 2 sequels, a remake, a hit TV series and acres of merchandising and media, Evil Dead serves as one of the spines of the contemporary horror film. And this first movie - which uses Deliverance as its framework before turning into Night of the Living Dead on crack - is a genuinely frightening,savage experience. And the woods themselves are the monster, of course, alive and vicious. The rape scene in Deliverance is duplicated here, except the assailant is a tree.
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Pumpinkhead (1988)
Legendary '80s monster movie, the work of late FX guru Stan Winston who also directed. This is a powerful story of a rural man whose beloved son is accidentally killed by a gang of motocross enthusiasts. He ventures deep into the woods to make a deal with a swamp witch to raise the demon "Pumpkinhead" to exact bloody vengeance. Atmospheric, scary and emotional. the woods are a character in this little gem of a shocker.
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Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
Artisan rushed this sort-of-sequel to the finish line to capture the fever sparked by the original Blair Witch flick. It was a critical and commercial belly-flop. But it's a really interesting film, with teens obsessed by the legend going to woods for a weekend of debauchery and eventually, death. Not a found footage picture, this is documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger's only narrative feature to date and fascinatingly, it feels like a horror film version of his famous and controversial Paradise Lost movies. Definitely worth a re-watch and re-evaluation.
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Wrong Turn (2003)
Rob Schmidt's shot-in-Canada creeper is an amalgam of Deliverance and Friday the 13th and spawned a seemingly never ending film franchise. But this first entry is a quality backwoods horror gem with a great young cast (Desmond Harrington. Jeremy Sisto, Eliza Dushku) and wicked Stan Winston make-up FX. Scary, silly, gory, stylish and tight little creeper. Watch out for the heart-stopping sequence in the fiend's cabin!
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Anichrist (2009)
Notorious Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier's sexual and sickening story of feminine madness in the deep woods is among the most grueling and unsparing horror movies in recent memory. Charlotte Gainsbourg gives a tour-de-force turn as a grieving mother who goes with her husband to cabin in the woods to have sex and heal. Instead she sees rabid talking foxes, supernatural entities and then cuts off her own clitoris. Beware this movie.
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Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Both a thumbing of the nose at and a celebration of the deep woods horror flick, co-writer Joss Whedon and director Drew Goddard's hipster meta-movie has its fans and certainly, the movie is clever. But it's not scary. It's a send up. In it, the titular cabin is a trap, an experiment run by a cabal of blue-collar workers who manipulate the horror from their underground lab. Great climax, no matter how you slice it, and a film admired by many. We can take it or leave it...
