2 Words - Cell Phone!!

Rating: 9/10 (29 October 2002)

Just kidding, its hard to believe this movie is only 3 years old...seems like I've been watching it for much longer. Regardless, the film takes place back in the dark ages of 1994, when cell phones weren't as yet handed out to all citizens at birth. I've seen this movie many many times, and it still chills me. Its become the "Its a Wonderful Life" of the Halloween season. It expertly exploits the lingering childhood fears of the woods after dark, and the haunted abandoned house. Once again if you keep the supernatural question unanswered, (pay attention Hollywood), it is still possible to scare the fertilizer out of audiences. Film makers are usually just not willing to work that hard. This film has no sex or violence, and only the smallest tiniest dollop of gore. Yet it smokes any movie for fright thats been made in the last 20 years. The performances and writing are brilliantly natural and completely believable, and pose an interesting sociological study on group behavior in crisis. The "I would have done this", and "they are stupid, why didn't they just"...thoughts and debates are what makes the film a masterpiece. Horror films about the woods have been made before, but sadly rarely make use of the woods per se, as the cuplrit of fear. Pity, that fear is deep in our psyche, stamped in our makeup, and if you cleverly storytell, a nut with a hockey mask and chainsaw are hardly required to bring it to the surface.