Wilderness

We watched Wilderness last night at work. Just wanted to say that the guy who plays Steve (Stephen Wight) was well fit - see pic above.

The film's basically a British teen horror-flick, which despite being extremely gory, is never really scary. Starting out in a teen offenders' institute, new-boy in the dorm, Callum, quickly proves that he's going to be no push-over for head-bully Steve, who uses mentally challenged Lewis as muscle.

After the suicide of Davie due to bullying by Steve and Lewis, the remaining guys get sent to a remote island for some male-bonding with guard Jed. Once there they get the feeling that they're not alone, even after meeting a group of girls there on some training excercise.

What follows is the grisly death of the gang as one by one they get picked off in more and more imaginative ways by a guy with a pack of dogs and a crossbow.

The problem with this film is that you never really feel for any of the characters (except maybe the girls), as they're all without exception evil bastards, so it's hard to sympathise with them when they're killed. Perhaps the only one that the viewer gets a feel for is Callum, although we're told several times he's a cold blooded murderer. There's little character development and the guys are little more than the social stereotypes of youth offenders: Callum the cold, silent killer, Steve the skinhead bully, Lewis the thick piece of muscle, Jethro the chilled out black guy and Blue the slimy sex-offender. Even Lindsay, the insipid Welsh coward, proves he's no less malicious than the rest and indeed you're glad when he dies.

There's a couple of plot fuck-ups here too... the biggest one being when Blue says he's never seen a dead body before - wrong - they all saw Davie dead in the dorm. Doh! Also, and without wanting to spoil the film, if Davie was so good why was he in a young offenders' institute in the first place?

Despite the flaws it's an enjoyable 90 minutes with plenty of gore to turn the stomach, some beautifully shot forest scenes and some funny dialogue. A slasher movie that's basically a cross between "Scum" and "Lord Of The Flies" it's quite frenetic and pretty exciting. Certainly worth getting out on DVD.