Really Awful Movies

The “camp out in the woods” subgenre of horror is rich in content, if not in quality.

For every Deliverance, The Burning, Southern Comfort, Rituals, and the compellingly underrated The Final Terror, there’s three or four dozen plus nubiles frolicking on a summer retreat flicks. At its nadir, there’s the ineptly hilarious Don’t Go in the Woods! (yes, the Jeopardy!-style exclamation point is part of the title) a title which bears similarities to this Polish production, though luckily not in its execution.

The bugbear of a lot of modern horrors is as follows: how to explain away near-universal phone connectivity, and why when a maniac in a mask is bearing down on you, you cannot simply put a call in to the authorities and be saved by GPS. Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight brilliantly deals with the problem by making the camp out in the wilderness, specifically designed for people addicted to their devices! That means, toss those phones in the bin, kids. Yes, that means you Twitch Gamer and you, YouTube personality.

There’s a terrific aerial shot of the buses getting to their destination via remote logging roads.

Then the kids (numbering at least 100 plus) are separated from their tech, subdivided into little platoons, and each with a camp counsellor, are made to go off into the wilderness to camp out like Bear Grylls and appreciate the beauty of nature.

Unfortunately, there’s a creature with a genesis a bit like The Thing that’s horribly disfigured, mean and nasty, and out for blood.

It’d be easy to dismiss Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight as a man in a rubber suit monster movie, if it weren’t so darned fun.

While viewers may not pick up on the nuances a Pole might appreciate, nonetheless there are enough well-written tried-and-true characters in whom to invest, some very odd courtship, not to mention some well-done practical effects gore.

*** (out of 5)

[Don’t forget to check out the podcast discussion of Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight]

Recoil is basically Stone Cold. That is, both Stone Cold, the Brian Bosworth movie (rogue muscle head law enforcement goes after a small town biker gang singlehandedly) and Stone Cold, the ex Bud-swilling WWE wrestler on whose brawny shoulders this one rests.

While The Boz (as the incomparably named Joe Huff) went undercover to infiltrate an evil motorcycle club, in Recoil Steve Austin’s Ryan Varrett does no such thing: he just takes out members of the MC wherever they happen to be.

And that wherever is beautiful British Columbia where many a shlocky action film has been lensed. In fact, the town of Hope in Recoil is a callback to the fictional town from Rambo: First Blood, lensed north east of Chilliwack, BC.

This biker gang here, stupidly monikered The Circle and with “anarchy” sewn into their patches, is lead by Salgado, the always leathery visaged Danny Trejo. Naturally, he was behind the hit against Varrett’s family in Texas. And the geometric gang is so brazen they murder the town’s only mechanic for being a rat, and hang him out to dry off the back of a tow truck. That’s not a savvy move when there are Harleys aplenty to service.

Recoil mostly bears all the hallmarks of a movie so cheesy, it should be served up on a tray with some heirloom tomatoes.

First off, there’s the uttering of the movie’s title in dialogue (but you’ll have to wait for the 90th minute of run time for that). Next, there’s the “we’ve got a problem,” in which the Sergeant-at-arms (or whatever requisite second-in-charge goon is around) informs the main baddie that they’re facing unforeseen issues with their plan, here in the form of a bald mesomorph who’s kneeing smelly bikers in the mug. And then, there’s the smug walking away from an explosion, in this case Varrett blowing up a meth lab and slowing strutting into the distance like he’s in The Magnificent Seven. Lastly, there’s a motel that’s not really a motel, but looks like a large bungalow with a “motel” sign stashed in one of the windows.

Vancouver native Serinda Swan (Graceland) and the ubiquitous Canadian fixture Lochlyn Munro (Freddy Vs Jason/Scary Movie/Night at the Roxbury) are along for the ride, portraying a near love interest and FBI agent respectively.

On the Really Awful Movies Podcast, we covered Stone Cold’s Hunt to Kill, another effort in which the Texas Rattlesnake is out for revenge in the lush mountains of Canada’s most picturesque province.

And like that one, Recoil is solid, if unspectacular, dumb, butt-kicking fun, with even a couple of squared circle moves thrown in for good measure.

*** (out of 5)

[for more about Recoil, see a prolonged discussion of the film on the Really Awful Movies Podcast!]