I have a friend who, like myself, is an avid horror fan. Any subgenre, any style, any language, any budget. The main difference is that my pal actually BUYS every DVD of these films. He has literally thousands of titles in his collection most of which I have never heard of. Such is the case of THE HIKE.
I'm writing this only minutes after I watched the film-indeed I was logging on to IMDb even as the final credits were still rolling. I found it to be an interesting, disturbing and sometimes quite brutal tale, full of twists and turns that simply won't let you go till the final shocking moment.
One element of the film which really got my attention was the incredible camera work (and the editing.... lingering on certain shots.... just that *moment* longer... whoa!) yeah. I actually found myself involuntarily invoking Hitchcock in my mind as certain scenes played out during the first third of the film. These scenes are particularly harrowing because we the viewer are being shown almost continuous and subtle clues that Something Isn't Right Out Here, yet the poor girls are clueless - not because they are stupid but because they are utterly unsuspecting that anything is amiss. One such scene is one where the gals are seen at a good distance from the camera, crossing a wide dry gulch. They are distant enough for their chatter to be indistinct. The camera slowly changes depth of focus, bringing the sounds with it, until we are very close to the camera indeed, where we vaguely see the outline of a young woman lying on the forest floor where she gasps and chokes her life away, all the while the lead gals frolic in the background...
Yeah, I enjoyed it. All the elements that make a film "good" to me hit it just right - especially the plotting, direction and camera work.
I give it a 73/100
I'm writing this only minutes after I watched the film-indeed I was logging on to IMDb even as the final credits were still rolling. I found it to be an interesting, disturbing and sometimes quite brutal tale, full of twists and turns that simply won't let you go till the final shocking moment.
One element of the film which really got my attention was the incredible camera work (and the editing.... lingering on certain shots.... just that *moment* longer... whoa!) yeah. I actually found myself involuntarily invoking Hitchcock in my mind as certain scenes played out during the first third of the film. These scenes are particularly harrowing because we the viewer are being shown almost continuous and subtle clues that Something Isn't Right Out Here, yet the poor girls are clueless - not because they are stupid but because they are utterly unsuspecting that anything is amiss. One such scene is one where the gals are seen at a good distance from the camera, crossing a wide dry gulch. They are distant enough for their chatter to be indistinct. The camera slowly changes depth of focus, bringing the sounds with it, until we are very close to the camera indeed, where we vaguely see the outline of a young woman lying on the forest floor where she gasps and chokes her life away, all the while the lead gals frolic in the background...
Yeah, I enjoyed it. All the elements that make a film "good" to me hit it just right - especially the plotting, direction and camera work.
I give it a 73/100