I have a problem in my life. Well, like anyone else, I have MANY problems, but lets focus on just the one right now...See, my problem is that I will watch almost anything if you tell me that Bruce Campbell is in it. Yes, I know he did Alien Apocolypse. Yes, I know he was in McHale's Navy. Yes, I know he's doing Old Spice commercials now... But goddammit, he was Ash. Ash! Do you understand that? Of course you do.
So, it is with Bruce Campbell's name on the cover that I picked up The Woods. A movie that starts innocently enough out in the woods...with a little girl starting a fire. A forest fire. A forest fire that YOU didn't prevent. Smokey would be so disappointed in you.
Heather is being enrolled in an "academy." A boarding school. Heather is also, apparently a bit of a firebug. She nearly burnt her house down over a disagreement with her mom! In back of the school are "the woods". They are potentially "haunted" by some witches. It's the basic kind of spook story told to new students, or around a campfire. Or is it?
From there students start going "missing" and then one kills herself. By hanging herself. In the lunchroom. It must have been salisbury steak day. Heather starts to discover what's going on after this. Well, after this and a car accident that kills her mother.
It's a surprisingly enjoyable movie though. I was expecting something a movie that was almost unwatchable, but The Woods is well worth the five bucks or so that I paid for the dvd. Bruce Campbell wasn't Ash, but he wasn't bad. He didn't have a ton of lines, and it was a pretty small role, but he did a great job. And besides, not many actors have as much "experience" with movies where trees attack as Campbell does. The rest of the characters suffer from "inconsistent personality disorder" for some unknown reason or a lack of personality.
If nothing else, The Woods is worth checking out, there's something fun about it. The dialouge is pretty sharp at times, and it's kinda fun trying to figure out what exactly is going on. Best of all, most of the characters seem human. As opposed to characters I guess. The Woods easily gets 7 1/2 gallons of weed killer out of 10.
