What a waste of my time!!!

Well Deserved Praise

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Henry (John Muscarnero) has a wife Susan (Tracy Coogan) who is terminally ill with some sort of cancer. By the end of DARK WOODS she dies. There's a popular expression in American, "we're not out of the woods yet." Henry's mind is muddled with all sorts of imaginary nonsense while his wife is dying. None of this would make any sense to the thinking viewer if taken LITERALLY, but apparently some people could not decipher director Michael Escobedo's subtlety. Mr. Escobedo tried to clue in the clueless right from the start, with a quotation from Dante's DIVINE COMEDY which makes it clear Henry's "dark woods" constitutes all the crap churned up in his id by his wife's impending demise. One must feel SORRY for viewers who somehow overlooked this quotation, and think any filmmaker would expect them to believe an American sheriff would place an abused teenage girl into the keeping of a young guy with a comatose wife to care for in a wilderness cabin for days on end. How many sheriffs could there be without an extra bedroom of their own (Henry's imagined cabin had just one bed)? Everyone else Henry talks to here is likely imaginary as well, except Susan. This obviously is not the most entertaining movie ever, but watching it should not be as hard as understanding an unsubtitled film in a language you don't speak!

I am not in the habit of writing reviews, but after seeing some of the others for this movie, I just had to. I don't know what other people were seeing that let them give it 9 stars or even 4, because it was so stupid I had to turn it off after about 25 minutes, and I have a fair amount of tolerance for stupid movies, at least to the point of watching the whole thing once. SO DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME! So here's why: Guy and his dying wife go up to a cabin in the middle of the woods. One night she's on the couch and sees a guy in the window, husband goes out to check, guy comes in the back door and starts groping the wife on the couch. The husband comes back in then just stands there saying get away from her, even though he has a weapon in his hand. Later, the sheriff comes, doesn't bother taking notes, says the description sounds like a neighbor who is a little odd. He sees the wife sitting quietly on the stairs but doesn't bother asking her any questions. Sheriff says he's short handed because two of his deputies are in the next county hunting for a serial rapist, and of course doesn't think the rapist might have moved and been the guy groping the wife. Next morning the wife is feeling better, so they might have sex for the first time in 10 months, but first she needs a shower. While she's doing that, the husband goes out jogging. Sure, I'm about to have sex, why not go get all sweaty first.... So while he's jogging, he comes across a woman being raped, chases the guy off, picks her up and takes her back to the cabin. Anyone else notice she was wearing a dress and heels in the middle of the woods? I don't think the rapist had a car. In the meantime, the wife has collapsed again, so the husband calls a doctor, who obviously is the wife's doctor and knows them, so came from whatever city they live in, which means he had to drive several hours to make this house call. I'm assuming that the rape victim is in a hospital somewhere by this point, but the next thing we see is the husband going outside, looking in through a window, and the girl is asleep on his couch. The next scene is him at a table eating with her. That is when I turned it off. What kind of retarded weirdo takes a woman who was just raped and lets her move in? What kind of idiotic doctor lets him do that? No need for police or hospital or worrying about evidence. What about the girl's family? What about any semblance of intelligence? I just spent more time writing this review than the movie is worth. Stay away. I read in other reviews that the sheriff asked the guy to take in the rape victim, but that hadn't happened yet when I stopped watching, so he was already letting her sleep there and feeding her. Anyway, that just makes it worse. Why is this backwoods sheriff so busy that he can't make time for a rape victim? He has a rapist running around, but wasn't she just raped? Wouldn't he want her in a secure location so he can collect evidence and interview her? Why on earth would he leave her in the care of some random civilian he doesn't know and who doesn't even live in the area? I also saw in one review something about a 'burning' question of whether it was okay to have sex with your comatose wife. Why is that a burning question? Sure, you could, and the wife wouldn't care or even notice, but it's a lot like necrophilia, isn't it? Is he trying to get her pregnant so he can have a child from her? Not that she'll live long enough in this case, but if it's just for sex, why doesn't he just masturbate in the bathroom? Basically, WTF??!?!?!?!? so stupid......made my brain hurt....

I had expected more from this movie, a whole lot more actually. But hey, maybe it wasn't just my type of movie.The story deals with a couple that goes into solitude as Susan (the woman) is dying, and they want to be together. Then while jogging, Henry (the man) stumbles upon a young girl in distress. He rescues Alicia and brings her into their cabin. Then from there, the story becomes one of human emotions, desires, struggles and inner turmoil. Enough said about the storyline without giving too much away.Even though the storyline had potential, I wasn't entertained by it. The movie crept forward in a very, very slow pace, and I found it to be mind-numbing. Had the story moved forward faster, with more things happening, the movie would have been all the more better. For me, the movie took way to long to get from A to B, and that killed the movie for me.The people in the movie were unfamiliar faces, to me at least. And I found the movie was carried by Tracy Coogan (playing Susan Branch) and Mary Kate Wiles (playing Alicia Larch). I didn't find John Muscarnero (playing Henry Branch) to really fully be in character. There was a single familiar face in the movie, though having only a supporting role, and that being James Russo (playing sheriff Demming). There are relatively few people in the movie, and it works well enough actually.One thing that stands out in the movie was that they managed to put together a decent enough movie with a fairly small budget. And that was cool. Always nice when smaller companies put together something out of the ordinary, just a shame that the movie was slow to get anywhere. And also the scenery and sets were nice, I especially liked the feeling of isolation in the forest.Overall, I found "Dark Woods" to be a below average movie. It is listed as a thriller, but there were hardly any thrills in the entire movie. And I think that actually was what lead me to pick up this movie, so I was expecting thrills and excitement. Having seen "Dark Woods", I can now honestly say that this movie, for me, doesn't have enough watching value for a second time.

When I first popped this is my DVD player I have to say I wasn't expecting all that much, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this story. Of course like any movie it has it's flaws but there was a point about a third of the way through when it got really good. The acting is also well done for an "indie" (especially the young girl and James Russo). And the cinematography is especially outstanding. Of course, the locations seem limited because it's an indie flick, but I found that to not take away from the story too much, especially since it's shot so beautifully and a lot of it out in nature in the beautiful woods. I give this movie a solid 7 out of 10.