Intense, suspenseful gem

Rating: 8/10 (21 July 1999)

OK, if you're looking for a shock ride this is not the scariest movie ever made, but it beats any shock-ride movie I've ever seen for sheer breathtaking horror and dread. **SUPER intense!** I **mean** it! A bit slow getting started, but tightens the noose steadily and inexorably. Wonderful use of black-and-white photography and of the simplest possible - but terribly effective - visual devices to suggest primal nature magick and relentless pursuit by night. As the bewildered, terrified kids begin to collapse from hunger, hopelessness and exhaustion you are right there with them, and I guarantee you will *not* be breathing during the tremendous final ten minutes. Cripes, what a climax!--BWP is a pure triumph of filmmaking simplicity and understanding of basic human psychology over multi-million-dollar monster effects, and I hope its lesson - which was well known by directors of decades past - is well remembered by filmmakers now and to come.