Wilderness shows us that just because you're making a film about a bunch of teenagers in the woods getting killed
it doesn't have to suck. There's nothing particularly fancy about this movie, but it's reasonably smart, sufficiently gory, thankfully unpretentious and refreshingly unself-aware .
The story concerns a group of boys in a juvenile detention facility in Great Britain. When one of their bunkmates is bullied into committing suicide, the head guard is assigned to take the teen convicts to a remote island for a character building exercise. While on the island, they make two discoveries. One is that a female head guard and two girl convicts are on the island for the same reason as the boys. The second is that someone is out to murder them all. It really is that nakedly formulaic, but these filmmakers take the time and effort to execute the formula as well as they can. The result is a fairly entertaining teen slasher flick. Well, it's really more of a teen skewering flick but if that's what you enjoy, you'll like Wilderness.
Now, there's not any more depth to this film than your average kids-getting-killed movie and it's not making any wry observations about the genre or trying to be ironic or anything like that. It just wants to be a nice little horror flick. There's plenty of running and screaming and a few legitimately shocking scenes. There's even some furtive sex, but without any nudity. That's probably the only teen slasher cliché that isn't featured and professionally pulled off.
The acid tests for this kind of script is "How stupid do the characters have to be in order to get killed?" and "How over-the-top ridiculous is the murderer's ability to kill them?" When people who should be running away in fear always stop and look in that dark room or always fall and sprain their ankle fleeing from the killer or when the killer can punch through a wall with his bare hand or get stabbed and shot but just shake it off, those are the signs of a bad script. Wilderness avoids almost all of those flaws, except for an ending where the previously very smart, skilled and tough murderer suddenly become a stupid wuss. Oh, well. Nobody's perfect.
Acting-wise, everyone in the cast gives fine performances. Granted, the roles are all broadly and obviously drawn but Stephen Wright and Luke Neal create a believable co-dependent relationship as two bullies and Karly Greene as the girl who comes between them gets to show her character is just as cruel and selfish as the two boys. Sean Pertwee and Alex Reid as the male and female guards also engage in a cute "who's got bigger balls" stare down.
If there's any problem with this film it's that the only characters who even remotely resemble good guys are disposed of early on, and the ones that are left are either ciphers you have no reason to care about or bad people who, to some extent, deserve what they're getting. It's also a little odd that the ones who survive are probably the least interesting characters in the story.
If you don't like teen slasher films, there's nothing special here to bother with. If you do enjoy that genre and would like to be reminded what good one looks and feels like, go rent Wilderness.
The story concerns a group of boys in a juvenile detention facility in Great Britain. When one of their bunkmates is bullied into committing suicide, the head guard is assigned to take the teen convicts to a remote island for a character building exercise. While on the island, they make two discoveries. One is that a female head guard and two girl convicts are on the island for the same reason as the boys. The second is that someone is out to murder them all. It really is that nakedly formulaic, but these filmmakers take the time and effort to execute the formula as well as they can. The result is a fairly entertaining teen slasher flick. Well, it's really more of a teen skewering flick but if that's what you enjoy, you'll like Wilderness.
Now, there's not any more depth to this film than your average kids-getting-killed movie and it's not making any wry observations about the genre or trying to be ironic or anything like that. It just wants to be a nice little horror flick. There's plenty of running and screaming and a few legitimately shocking scenes. There's even some furtive sex, but without any nudity. That's probably the only teen slasher cliché that isn't featured and professionally pulled off.
The acid tests for this kind of script is "How stupid do the characters have to be in order to get killed?" and "How over-the-top ridiculous is the murderer's ability to kill them?" When people who should be running away in fear always stop and look in that dark room or always fall and sprain their ankle fleeing from the killer or when the killer can punch through a wall with his bare hand or get stabbed and shot but just shake it off, those are the signs of a bad script. Wilderness avoids almost all of those flaws, except for an ending where the previously very smart, skilled and tough murderer suddenly become a stupid wuss. Oh, well. Nobody's perfect.
Acting-wise, everyone in the cast gives fine performances. Granted, the roles are all broadly and obviously drawn but Stephen Wright and Luke Neal create a believable co-dependent relationship as two bullies and Karly Greene as the girl who comes between them gets to show her character is just as cruel and selfish as the two boys. Sean Pertwee and Alex Reid as the male and female guards also engage in a cute "who's got bigger balls" stare down.
If there's any problem with this film it's that the only characters who even remotely resemble good guys are disposed of early on, and the ones that are left are either ciphers you have no reason to care about or bad people who, to some extent, deserve what they're getting. It's also a little odd that the ones who survive are probably the least interesting characters in the story.
If you don't like teen slasher films, there's nothing special here to bother with. If you do enjoy that genre and would like to be reminded what good one looks and feels like, go rent Wilderness.