Potentially creepy set-ups and an interesting monster both go begging thanks to amateurish acting and direction in this no-budget British horror, shot in some woods in East Sussex and punctuated by day-by-day inter-titles a la THE SHINING. There all comparisons to THE SHINING sadly end.

   Two city couples - both spectacularly drippy and lacking chemistry - decide it would be a good idea to take a camping / hiking trip by a lake. They fail to pick up on the fact that things look doomed from the start. The usual portentous horror movie stuff hints at Bad Things to come in the WRONG TURN / BLAIR WITCH PROJECT / LONG WEEKEND tradition. They hit a deer en-route to their rendezvous, an animal which is shamelessly used prior to death for a cheap jump-scare. An abandoned car suggests past traumas for hapless passers-by. Mobile phones are rubbish, as usual : “No signal!” / “We are in the middle of the woods”. One character gets attacked by some unconvincingly utilized wasps. Mysterious cries invade the silence at night time.

   Very quickly these characters (particularly one uber-annoying one named “Milk”) will encourage you to root for the evil force lurking in the woodland. There’s not a single sign of acting talent on display here : this and the simplistic filmmaking technique give the whole thing a home-movie feel. The couples smoke some weed, have some tent sex and come across a “survivor” who turns out to be a mysterious, monstrous thing with the capability of morphing into anyone and a fondness for killing campers and immersing them into the surrounding trees.

   There’s a lot of ominous shots of nature in the style of LONG WEEKEND and a really lame moment in which a girl reads JAWS while her partner appears to be imperiled in the nearby lake. It’s plodding, flat and lacking both gore and scares, despite some efforts to create a sense of unease. Given that all the central characters wind up crushed into the bark of trees, the film too easily prompts a cheap gag about wooden acting. The performances are on a par with some ill-advised digital FX, including predictably crap CG fire! On the whole, it’s a bum note in the impressive recent symphony of British horror.