Scary, only if you let it...

Rating: 8/10 (11 November 1999)

I have decided, after talking to several people about this film (I think of it more as a "film" than a movie), that there are basically two opinions: either "It scared the hell out of me" or "I thought it was totally stupid." I like to think that I enjoy engrossing myself in movies (er, films, I mean), so I happen to hold the former opinion.
In trying to decide why this clear duality of opinions exists, I came to the conclusion that you have to let the movie scare you; you have to put yourself in the tent with these three, you have to imagine what it would be like to be totally lost in the woods with all sorts of creepy stuff happening around you. I think that those who didn't get scared by the movie either couldn't do that, for lack of imagination, or their subconscious wouldn't let them, as some sort of defense mechanism. I did notice that the older the person I talked to, the more likely they were to think it was stupid.
And I'll be honest, for the first hour or so, I thought it was kind of dumb myself. I thought, rolling my eyes, that I was watching MTV's "The Real World Goes Camping", but my eyes stopped rolling when the noises at night began. I didn't even admit that I was scared by the movie until I was at home that night in a dark house, jumping at every little noise. When my cat knocked something off a shelf, I nearly had a heart attack...
That's when I admitted to myself that this movie (or film, whatever) really scared me, and I truly enjoy being scared for the sake of entertainment. I definitely give it my recommendation, and I think you will be scared too, but only if you allow yourself to be scared by it.