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LeftSideCut (3778 KP) rated Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight (2020) in Movies

Oct 29, 2020 (Updated Oct 29, 2020)

Contains spoilers, click to show

As a starting note, please please please watch this film with the audio set to Polish with subtitles. Netflix started playing the dubbed version for me, and I managed about 30 seconds worth of cheesy American voice over before I couldn't stand it any longer. It's 100% more natural the way it was intended.

Nobody Sleeps in the Woods tonight is absolutely and wholly not original - it cherry picks parts from other horror movies and shamelessly imitates them, and do you know what? I don't hate it.
The whole movie is shot nicely, especially taking into account it's low budget.
Among these moments we have:
- A sleeping bag kill ripped straight out of Friday the 13th Part VII.
- A character explaining the rules of horror movies just like in Scream.
- A character tied to a chair and ballgagged a la Hostel.
- Big cannabalistic, dungaree wearing woodsman straight out of Wrong Turn.
- A cut-in-half-vertically-with-an-axe kill from Wrong Turn 2, using the same damn camera angle and everything.
- A character going through a woodchipper like in Tucker and Dale vs Evil
- An under the bed shot of someone being stabbed repeatedly with a machete, just like in Freddy vs Jason.

So yeah, absolutely zero points for originality, but props for executing it all to a satisfactory degree. A less cynical person could choose to look at it as a horror love letter, rather than a rip off.

Some of the camerawork is genuinely fantastic. There are multiple shots during the runtime that are quite captivating, and took me out of the standard slasher situation now and again.
The make up effects applied to the monster men are pretty good, and the movie delivers some pretty brutal gore. It's hard to fully tell, but it looked like a fair chunk of it was practical, which is always a bonus.
The characters are likable as well, especially the badass final girl Zodiac, played awesomely by Julia Wieniawa-Narkiewicz.
The film also touches on some social issues, such as the perception of homosexuality in Poland. It's a shame it's not explored further than a few lines of dialogue.

Nobody Sleeps in the Woods may be down right predictable, but if you can leave any cynicism at the door, then it's a pretty fun slasher to pass the time.
As my first foray into Polish horror, I found it mostly enjoyable. Worth checking out for any horror fans.

Kudos

Emma @ The Movies (1786 KP) rated The Children Act (2018) in Movies

Sep 25, 2019

Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci in a movie together... yeeeees. Get me a ticket immediately. Based on a book by Ian McEwan, and no of course I haven't read it. I was exoecting something run of the mill, good, but nothing with a wow factor. I certainly wasn't expecting to be having to stiffle sobs and tears.

The heart breaking story really does get you caught up. Watching Fiona's hard and logical exterior break is really something to behold. How I wasn't blind from the tears when she started performing their song at the recital I will never know. Although, full disclosure, at that point I was leaning on my hands with my cardigan sleeves firmly wedged under the rims of my glasses.

Having never really had any faith, or certainly never any that I would have been so conflicted over, I can't say how accurate a portrayal it was, but it felt traumatisingly real.

As a smaller release this was allocated one of the dinky screens that has about 120 seats. A third of the seats were taken, and I'm going to make wild assumptions now, I would guess that they were all in book groups.

To go off-piste a bit... I mentioned in a previous post that I feel like it's the adults that cause the most disturbance at the cinema. This showing would prove my point. At the beginning I couldn't hear the ads over the noise of the 30 odd people at the time (and they were very odd) talking so loud. I have been to quieter bars.

That was followed up by two people moving seats after the film started, and when the couple next to them started rustling a sweet bag the guy told them to stop as it was annoying him... Don't have the cheek to lecture people when you shouldn't even be sitting there. Random annoying people is something you have to suck up. I bitch about it on Twitter, not to the actual people. When you buy a ticket you're basically checking the box that says "if I end up next to a monster, so be it." I'm super passive aggressive when it comes to people like that, I can almost guarantee that in the same situation I would have missed the rest of the film because I'd be sitting there staring at him as I rustled the bag deliberately for the next two hours.

The moral of this story is don't be a dick to people about something that is expected in the cinema... because you might be sitting next to me.