Stranger in the Woods (2024)
Director: Adam Newacheck
Writer: Holly Kenney
Stars: Holly Kenney, Brendin Brown, Paris Nicole
How to Watch: VOD
Synopsis: Stranger in the Woods follows Olivia and her friends as they go on a vacation. After Olivia nearly drowns with a slit wrist in her bathtub after her fiancé's funeral, her friends suspect that she tried to kill herself, but she believes someone attacked her.
Thoughts: Remember those early 00's horror movies that felt like they still had one foot in the '90s and the other foot in what they thought was a new idea? Well, this is that movie but twenty years later. This makes for a somewhat nostalgic-feeling movie that plays out exactly like you thought it would.
Holly Kenney wrote and starred in her own horror movie. Which is awesome. What a dream! But the problem is she's not the greatest actress. This low-budget, grungy little thriller, and I'm going to call it a thriller, could have benefited from some serious talent as the main actress. Holly is good enough. She is. But she looks like she was snagged from the mall as a thirty-something ex-goth girl who hasn't moved on with her life. The story is extremely basic and the twist ending is one that you can see coming from the start. The most menacing thing about this movie is the cover art. Only a couple people die in this and not in a particularly interesting way. If this were the '90s, this would have gone straight to being a midnight movie on basic cable and wouldn't have seen VHS light of day maybe ever.
Was it a fun movie? Not particularly. And it wasn't even bad in that unwatchable way that tends to happen with contemporary low-budget films. It was fine. A passable excuse for a movie attempting to be horror but missing its mark and instead being a basic thriller warning us about male toxicity. Thanks, we got the memo a few decades ago.
2 out of 5 💀 s
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