It is another week and another time where the scheduled film for review was unable to be watched due to screener issues. I have a pile of DVDs that I haven't got around to watching and so randomly picked one, which turned out to be the M.J Bassett (four episodes of the Ash vs Evil Dead TV show, Deathwatch) directed slasher - Wilderness. My expectations were low, but as the film went on I found myself pleasantly surprised.
After their bullied dormmate commits suicide, a group of young offenders are taken off to a former Army owned deserted island by the institute warden - Jed (Sean Pertwee - Gotham TV show, Botched, Dog Soldiers). He hopes that some team building exercises there will bring the teenagers together. They soon discover however that they are not the only people on the island as they encounter a couple of teenage girls led by former soldier - Louise (Alex Reid - The Descent) as well as a crazed survivalist (Stephen Don - Game of Thrones TV show) and his pack of vicious dogs who seems determined to kill them all for reason unknown. Even with all their lives in danger, personal grudges among the criminals threaten to speed up the process.
Maybe it was just being a British horror and with it having Pertwee among the cast, but I got a feel of Dog Soldiers to this. There was also bit of a Battle Royale feel to the film, being mainly set outside on an island I guess would be sure to bring parallels to that classic.
After a needed first act set at the young offenders institute, the movie moves over to the island where the various personalities of the protagonists are set out. Normally it would be a bad thing to have lead characters that you didn't want to root for, but here, with many of the characters being quite nasty people, it was often satisfying to see their varied death scenes. Toby Kebbell (War for the Planet of the Apes, Kong: Skull Island) is the main protagonist, playing the silently brooding Callum, a character who had newly arrived at the institute. I guess he was the one that viewers were meant to root for but he did come across as a bit weird. Steve (Stephen Wight - Men in Black: International, Highlander: The Source) is the most hateable of the cast, a skinhead bully who uses the hulking Lewis (Luke Neal - Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi) to do his dirty work. He may have been horrid, but I think Steve may have been the stand-out character here. The other characters also are all quite stereotypical, such as chav Blue (Adam Deacon - Dead Set TV show), and the very snivelling and cowardly Lindsay (Ben McKay - Hot Fuzz).
The various personalities have as much conflict within as without, with some of the respectable body count coming from infighting. I thought there was a decent amount of characters, and while they were all generic, I thought they made for a varied bunch. Some had more time to shine than others, with some in particular not really doing much at all. Much of the dialogue could be quite amusing. There is no end of swearing and insults, but lines made me smile on occasion, such as one highlight when a character states "This uninhabited island is getting pretty f*cking crowded!" after the group discover yet more people who are not meant to be there.
One of the highlights for Wilderness are the fun kill scenes, with special mention going to the make-up effects on the dead bodies. There was a neat looking early scene of a character getting mauled to death by a pack of dogs, and many of the kill scenes revolve around survivalist type things such as bear traps, tripwires and arrows. There wasn't one type of kill used more than once (on screen at least) and so it was always fun to see how the next poor victim would meet their end. Special effects always looked great, mostly practical as far as I could tell, and a good use of editing to dodge around things that maybe wouldn't look as good on closer inspection, such as dead dogs. The story wasn't bad, with decent motivations for the antagonist and some later twists that nearly took me by surprise.
Wilderness was a solid slasher that made good use of both the outdoor locations, and special effects that rarely disappointed. The characters might have felt a little too much like caricatures at times, but I enjoyed the casts interactions with each other, even if the one set-up to be the lead was one of the least interesting. This was more entertaining than it had any right to be.
SCORE:
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