You can now check out a film titled Lurking Woods, an Australian suspense thriller that’s new in the market. Rizal Halim was the director, and it was released in 2015.
Like most today’s genre films, Lurking Woods evolves around an outing gone wrong, which is supposed to be a horror movie. The group of 6 who form the friend circle include a seasoned actors: Mike (Troy Coward), Andrea (Hope Devaney), Scott (Daniel Berenger), Alice (Chloe Brown), Tim (Kyle James Sargon) and Arleen (Dominique Shenton). The backdrop is set in the outback of Australia in a rented cabin specifically booked for the friend’s private get together.
It’s not hard to assume that this group of girls and guys aged around 20 has a penchant for weekend hook-ups, partying, and romance. But those aspects become a lot more complex with the arrival of a masked serial killer. In a Scream-inspired twist, our killer is lurking in the shadows with a Halloween mask on as he picks them off one by one. So what makes this film different from the other 100 films that have come out in the past couple of years that follow this premise? As far as my research shows, not much besides the fact that it is set in Australia and adds a twist by incorporating a specialty hook-up game that matches people by means of traditional treasure hunting. In essence, it helps the film makers to make better use of their environment.
The film attempts to keep the attention of the audience with dialogues that unfold around the character’s abilities to make romantic relationships. The kills here are never really clever “per se” but appear to follow the roadmap of typical slasher style killings. The acting performances in the film feel more natural than forced which makes it a bit more entertaining than the other films I have seen so far this year. Setting up the mystery of “who is killing off the participants” is reveal for this story. Scenery here is kept interesting enough via the use of the local surroundings combined by the dialogues between actors.
“Lurking Woods” is a Rizal Halim first attempt at directing a film and it’s pretty clear he’s trying to break into the film industry. With the use of a “Dragon” camera (which I am not familiar with?), they seem to use basic props and stick to a simple budget. This can definitely work as a pilot for bigger budget and more sophisticated budgets and in an ideal world would make the best list of the year. But for now it can still be used as a fathomable attempt at peg positioning into the industry.
From the very beginning, I had problems with “Lurking Woods” because of the production issues. To some extent, the cinematography and editing were done professionally, but the film suffers from serious audio issues. It’s not the soundtrack, which I thought was done quite well, but rather the audio recording that lacked proper mic placement. The end result is a rather pronounced hollow audio track, which is most apparent in indoor settings. This is a major problem for the filmmakers, who may have to make the difficult choice of re-shooting, using it, or overdubbing, which is very time consuming. Unless they perform a total re-shoot/recording, I’m afraid this issue will haunt this production indefinitely.
I felt that the hot tub scene where 6 adults are trying to squeeze into a hot tub that was made for 1, was odd. I guess some viewers might consider this a silly comedic moment though I do not think this was the intention. (Maybe a quick shot at a local hotel for this might have presented better?)
In all, like mentioned above, there is really nothing new here that you haven’t already seen. I understand that slasher fans in this niche would recognize and be grateful for the plot devices, but I personally would not stake this one for putting Australia on the map, but in terms of intensity in films, there more candidates like “Wolf Creek,” “The Babadook,” or “Lake Mungo.” In closing, enjoy it, but always understand that every production commences at a certain point before exploring creativity!
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