Timber Falls

Timber Falls
Starring: Josh Randall, Brianna Brown, Nick Searcy, Beth Broderick
Directed by: Tony Giglio

Style: Backwater kidnapping
Blood and Guts: 3
Fright Factor: 1
Laugh Factor: 0
Weapons of choice: Double-bladed scythe, firearms
Overall rating: 2 out of 5

Mike (Randall) and Sheryl (Brown) are looking for a nice weekend getaway in the national park, free from all the craziness of the modern world. Instead, they find themselves victims of the crazy world of a fanatically religious couple living off the beaten path. Between the dark intentions of their captors and the deformed maniac that is the captors’ son, Mike and Sheryl can only hope to survive long enough to escape.

This film struggles throughout the story to engage the audience, and that is its biggest fault. The actors all appear to be trying their best, but there are a lot of moments that are very hollow and flat, particularly between Mike and Sheryl. As a result, there is never a strong, believable connection between them, so the rest of the plot that hinges around them drawing strength from one another to survive, is left out to dry. Other characters suffer too. At one point, it seems like the director is trying to make the point that not all country boys and actually malicious, but then it decides to portray its characters as that anyway.

The main antagonists all do well for themselves, but the story seems to be aiming for a much more deep-seated, psychological horror and ends up being too subtle with all of the events. In fact, the early scene where Mike and Sheryl are intimidated by some country boys coming back from a hunting trip has a greater sense of danger and malice than anything else that comes after it. As the movie progresses, it has to stretch more and more to even have a sense of danger conveyed, something that is not helped by the fact that Mike struts around like he knows he has a 95% chance of survival no matter what.

Not all of the movie is disappointing. The maniac son with the double-bladed sickle and some decent makeup effects feels at home to this style of film, though it is a shame that the movie instead tries to be something it isn’t by focusing on the kidnappers and not their homicidal kin. While it is noble to try other avenues of horror, one cannot get away with psychological horror without very strong characters and an excellent sense of atmosphere and timing, something this movie lacks. Nothing proves this more than the final shot of the film ripped off from a genre already suffering from cliches.

In the end, this movie suffers from being far too generic and dull. No matter how many seemingly new tricks it pulls out of its bag, it still feels like its clunking along thanks to a few wooden performances and a lack of decent story development. With a few revision drafts to refine the story down to something solid, this movie could have been decent. Instead, it feels too sloppy and falls to the wayside.