Timber Falls

Plot synopsis:
A couple is seen being tortured. After "Sarah" escapes from her bondings, her boyfriend tells her to run and is killed. Sarah runs from a figure in a black trench coat and a modified sickle. When Sarah is trapped on the edge of a cliff, she jumps off the cliff and is killed when she hits the ground.
The following scene shows another couple: Sheryl and Mike go on a hiking trip for the week. Though they are told by the park ranger that they should take the beginner's trail, the couple decides to go on the trail called "Timber Falls" at the advice of a friendly woman. The two meet a group of unfriendly hunters, and the couple is warned by the hunters that they should be careful about what they do in the woods, as some residents there do not take kindly to certain actions. Sheryl convinces Mike to empty his handgun of bullets, thinking there is nothing to worry about. The couple sets up camp after hiking down the trail and meeting up with another park ranger.
The couple goes to sleep, not noticing the shadowy figure that spies on them during the night. In the morning, Sheryl goes down to a lake to bathe. Though not shown on-screen, Sheryl is kidnapped by an unknown person. Mike wakes up and finds that Sheryl is missing. He tries to find her, and sees two of the hunters he and Sheryl encountered the previous day. He sees one of them holding one of Sheryl's articles of clothing. Believing they kidnapped her, he hits one of them over the head with a log, causing one hunter to run away. After taking the hunter's shotgun, Mike demands that the hunter tells him where Sheryl is. Though the hunter tells Mike he hasn't seen her since the day before, Mike knocks him out by hitting him with the stock of the shotgun after the hunter tries to attack him with a knife.
Mike leaves the hunter for dead, and continues his search for Sheryl. He soon gets his foot caught in a bear trap. He slowly faints. After he wakes up, he finds himself in a cabin. The cabin, owned by Ida Forester, who was the woman Mike and Sheryl saw the day before. She nurses him back to health, and assures Mike that she will contact the sheriff via the radio upstairs. Mike believes that Ida stole his wallet as she calls him by his real name "Michael". He claims that no stranger could figure that out so easily because he told very few people what his real name was, and claims that she stole his wallet and his I.D. She denies this, but he begins demanding that she let him use the radio. Ida and Mike engage in a fight, ending in the wounded Mike apparently knocking out Ida.
Mike rushes upstairs to use the radio, only to find it does not work. The camera then goes to Sheryl and shows her running away from a strange figure in a black trench coat. She finds the same park ranger they saw on the trail, only to find out he is allied with the man who was chasing Sheryl. It is revealed that this happened before Ida found Mike, as when Mike enters the cabin's basement, he finds Sheryl there, strapped to a chair. The basement of the cabin is shown as some sort of shrine, with a shelf of prematurely born babies in jars with name plates on the jars, a room which appears to be a containment room, and a room that appears to be a torture room. Mike, after finding Sheryl, is captured by Clyde, Ida, and Ida's brother Deacon, whose face is horribly disfigured. The family is shown to be a group of insane religious fanatics, believing that capturing the couple is for a good purpose.
After Ida describes having seen the couple having sex in their tent a few days previously, she and Clyde tell the couple that the punishment for their sins is for them to have a child for Ida and Clyde, due to Ida not being able to have a baby successfully. Mike and Sheryl are forced to marry, and over the course of three days, Ida and Clyde force them to attempt to have a child, brutally torturing them if they do not. Sheryl and Mike decide not to have a baby, for both know that when they do have a child, Ida and Clyde obviously will kill them. After a few days pass, two of the men Sheryl and Mike met days before hear about the missing couple, and decide that something strange is going on at Ida and Clyde's home. The two journey there on the third night that Mike and Sheryl have been captured. One goes through the front door, the other find a secret door to the cabin's basement.
The man who goes through the hidden door is killed by Clyde, only after Mike manages to yell for help. As the other man enters the basement, he is shot and killed by Ida. After Ida and Clyde come down to the basement and gloat about there being no rescue coming for Sheryl and Mike, Sheryl begins laughing hysterically. She tells Ida that she has already gotten pregnant with Mike before they went on the hiking trip, telling Ida that the child was conceived "in sin". Ida, in shock, drops the small blade she was going to mutilate Sheryl with. After Ida leaves the room, Mike quickly picks up the blade and slashes Clyde's throat. The couple then knocks out Ida, and Mike shoots Clyde in the head with the shotgun Ida had, mocking what Clyde had said earlier by saying, "I understand your extreme circumstances, but punishment must be handed down" before he shoots him.
After hobbling out of the basement, the couple exits the basement and prepares to leave the cabin. Mike tells Sheryl to run for help, and as she does, she is confronted by Deacon in the cabin. After a chase, she sets him on fire by pouring moonshine on him and then a lit match. She picks up his sickle and enters the cabin to get Mike. Ida charges out of the basement and stabs Mike with a knife; Sheryl quickly decapitates her with the sickle she took from Deacon.
A year has passed as we see the couple putting their baby to bed, leaving the room. As the movie ends the camera fades over to the window where Deacon's sickle is suddenly shown.

Tags: violence

Review:
They ask for directions to the local guard that advises them to follow the Donner Trail or the Willow Creek Bridge; however, Mike meets the local Ida Forester (Beth Broderick) in the crossroad that tells them that Timber Falls has magnificent landscapes and a wonderful waterfall and the couple decide to go to the place.
The desperate Mike seeks her, and finds a deranged fanatic religious family that needs them to procreate an offspring."Timber Falls" has an unoriginal story that I have seen many times: "The Hills Have Eyes", "Wrong Turn", I can count many movies with stories similar to the original "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and also "Deliverance", "Misery" plus a collection of clichés of the genre.
I paid my 1.07 and brought it home thinking that I was in for another cheap digital, direct to DVD bomb (see Full Moon's "Petrified" for all time worst movie.) Maybe I'd get a couple of "Plan 9" type laughs out of Timber Falls.
Sure I've seen this type of plot line a dozen times or so, but what the hell--I love those predictable zombie movies too and will rent them religiously.
Timber Falls, despite being similar to many horror movies taking place in a lonely wooded area, still manages to stand its ground within the genre.
The opening 20 minutes starts out with everything horror fans have seen before; but when the villain's motive is finally revealed, the film will be sure to catch you off guard.
When a young couple (Josh Randall and Brianna Brown) go hiking in West Virginia, they meet with a local woman named Ida (Beth Broderick) who recommends that they head along the trail to Timber Falls due to the beautiful waterfalls and gorgeous Appalachian views.
The best scene in the entire movie comes in the opening segment which features a lot of blood and the rather gruesome way in which a young woman frees herself from imprisonment.
With only one exception that I can think of, the camera subsequently shies away from showing most of what is happening.The fact that it borrows from other movies isn't what causes "Timber Falls" to fail.
The Romanian landscape (where the movie was actually filmed) is captured beautifully and he fully conveys the gloom of the location in which the two main characters are imprisoned.As it is, "Timber Falls" isn't a bad movie.
The torture scenes aren't particularly interesting and there's absolutely nothing here that you haven't seen before in other horror movies of this ilk.
If you've already watched "The Hills Have Eyes", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Wrong Turn" and all the other scary wilderness/torture-porn movies then this will be an okay rental until something better arrives.
And this film takes that to a whole new level.Horrible story that we've all seen a thousand times before, stupid illogical character actions that just make you mad, a ridiculous ending and every single shitty cliché possible.
Good, there will be a sequel....The burned brother with the cycle coming after them again..I really enjoyed this movie, it was just enough gore without being overly done and too too bloody and the characters were religious fanatics, creepy, dumb, and crazy backwoods country folks who are strange enough to do anything....This film was way better than Cabin Fever....You won't waste your time with this film, just get you some popcorn and enjoy !.
Another movie trying to shock us with insane bastardised Christians who think the phrase "thou shalt not take the lords name in vain." is the way into heaven, whereas the phrase "thou shalt not kill" is just symbolic and not worth following.The story is about a couple from the city who decide a fun way to spend the weekend would be to go hiking in hickville U.S.A., but even the movie "Deliverance" couldn't have prepared them for what was about to take place...
"oops i accidentally stepped in a bear trap while walking backwards, but thankfully the same crazy old lady i met earlier was able to find me 10 seconds later and bring me back to her house" For example what would have made more sense rather than each character making their little introductions along the trail before being part of the story is if they appeared just ONCE rather than reappearing.
Also The dialogue isn't exactly fantastic and it seems so much like the actors just coming on screen to say "Hello, I will be playing the old lady" "hello, i will be playing the cop" and at 100 minutes running time it's not like they needed any filler, though I will say that the actors put out an honest good effort.
Believe it coming from me that this movies good, im pretty much the biggest horror film purist/elitist ever.
Timber Falls is the typical horror movie about teens having big troubles in the woods.
Without introducing something we've never seen before, Timber Falls manages to be entertaining for the most part.Mike and Sheryl are young, traveling couple whose destination is a lake in the woods.
First and foremost I was'nt expecting a 'classic' by any means, and as a lifelong horror fan i left overt criticism behind a long time ago,but after watching 'timber falls'i felt compelled to write.This film's problem is'nt that it's Derivative -i could watch limitless variation's on the deliverance theme - more it's guilty of one of the worst sins (pardon the pun) of any film genre(the horror genre especially) and that is of being as dull as hell.If the script writers of this yawnathon injected anymore life into the dialogue it would be a barely twitching corpse,you have too wait over an hour for any near decent gore and when it comes it's all cgi'ed and sterile (imagine tom savini after a lobotomy given free reign with an apple mac) and the casting isn't great either the two main leads being remarkably wooden and even the hillbilly bullies looked and acted like'one tree hill' extra's who haven't shaved for a couple of days.Being a huge horror movie fan i often have to justify my love of this much mocked film genre to non horror fan friends,sadly with uninspired boreathons like 'timber falls',it's sadly all to easy to see where there coming from..
Started out reasonably okay, the first 17 minutes or so set up for a fairly decent film.But 18 minutes in, perhaps the most stupid decision a character in a movie of all times happen which kind of makes you lose hope in the movie as a whole.Right after being harassed by some creepy armed rednecks, the wife inexplicably decides to force her husband to get rid of his gun in case they come back and he have to kill them.Like really?Who writes this crap?PS that's not really a spoiler as it's so early on in the movie, and it's not really a major plot point, also if you do decide to go ahead and watch this movie I feel as that it's to your benefit to know it just so you can more easily look aside it and pretend it didn't happen, which you kinda have to do to remotely enjoy the rest of the film.Anyway, as it progresses I found that for the more part it was pretty dull, actually that's a understatement I found the middle of the movie to be extremely dull.
A couple Mike and Sheryl are going off into the West Wirgina woods for the weekend of hiking.Their main goal is to see the titular falls.They don't know that there is a danger lurking deep in the woods.A crazy family of religious freaks kidnaps unsuspecting tourists,torture and kill them.They are trying to coerce Sheryl and Mike into having sex in order to provide them with a baby."Timber Falls" pretty much reminded me "Wrong Turn" and every other survival flick I have seen including "Deliverance".Admittedly three hunters selling moonshine in the woods are pretty amusing,but the film relies too much on clichés.The plot is predictable and the gore is quite plentiful.One thing for sure:the scenery of West Virginia is delightful.6 out of 10..
Movie should have ended there with Mike giving Sheryl to the local hunters and going to fish and hunt with them later as he was obviously dating a dimwit.So the sweet couple encounter some local crazed Christian couple, a goofy inbred, local hunters, all were really good actors, too bad such a lame script to practice their acting chops.Skip this flick and go hiking in the woods instead.
"Timber Falls" (2007) would not be a bad movie had the director not decided to fancy up the last part and especially chosen an ineffably stupid end.
Since many people have criticized that the basic motive of the movie is known, let us investigate a bit.In "Timber Falls" as well as in related horror movies, two persons, mostly a young man and his girlfriend, end up in a forest, may it be because of vacation, by accident amidst of a road, by a fraternity prank or whatever.
Only is the past 2 or 3 years, the following movies (a very short selection) follow this motive with only little variation: The Lodge (2007), Dead of Winter (2007), Wind Chill (2007), Scarce (2008), "The Last House on the Left" (2009), the letter combining the "forest"-motive with the also recently very wide-spread "lake"-motive on or out of which corpses, with or without supra-natural strength, are appearing.From the history of horror, especially in the USA, this motive is salient, since the gigantic forests of the New World are not populated by Erl Kings, Libussas, Elfs and other ghosts like the woods in the Old World are.
The third source, which I cannot prove, but am convinced about its existence, is the re-settlement of (traditional or invented) New England-horror motives in the rest of the USA, and may it be for purely practical sake of film making: Everybody who lives in that area, will tell down to his grand-children that according to that movie, this or that happened in those forests.
At the end, the movie worked but the ending was typical predictable and we have seen so many in this style, Wrong Turn and that kind of horrors.
On one hand, it's an admirably tense nowadays horror flick with brutal gore, lovely filming locations and identifiable main characters, but on the other hand it serves cliché after cliché and it's full of predictable twists.
I liked the realism of the character drawings and for once the lead protagonists Mike and Sheryl are okay people that you actually wish to survive their ordeal, but fact remains that you've seen this exact same story dozens of times before and I can't filter out any aspect that is unique.
Young couple goes hiking in a West Virginian national park (although for budgetary reasons the film is actually shot in Romania) where they ask the wrong persons for directions and end up in the torture dungeon of a deranged hillbilly family with a deformed son.
That's also not a big surprise, I guess And yet, I would still encourage genre admirers to check "Timber Falls" out, because it's a competently made and unhinged horror flick that doesn't feature any boring moments.
The performances of Josh Randall and the beautiful Brianna Brown are more than adequate and TV-starlet Beth Broderick ("Lost", "Sabrina Teenage Witch") clearly had a field day depicting the deranged backwoods bitch Ida. Oh, perhaps one thing that features here and you won't find in similar gore flicks: the ending.
Instead TIMBER FALLShas a clean-spirited B-movie feel which buoys it up somewhat.The acting is generally passable for the genre; Brianna Brown is the requisite pretty blonde scream queen while Josh Randall starts out as a jerk but gradually grows on you out of his sheer persistence alone.
The script works hard to create some original motivations for the many villains in the film, but there are some gaping plot holes and the lead guy really is an idiot at times, walking back into a bear trap at one point; it's hard to sympathise with him after this.Nonetheless, despite the plentiful flaws, I liked TIMBER FALLS.
Young couple Mike (Josh Randall) and Sheryl (Brianna Brown) go hiking in the wilds, but ignore the advice of the park ranger, opting instead to take a trail suggested by forest dweller Ida (Beth Broderick).
After another run in with the troublesome hicks from the previous day that leaves him seriously wounded, Mike finds himself being tended to by Ida, but comes to suspect that the woman might have something to do with Sheryl's disappearanceTimber Falls is what you get when you take a routine backwoods horror plot and inject a little torture into proceedings for good measure: it's Wrong Turn with a touch of Hostel by way of Misery, Deliverance and TCM, and as such offers seasoned horror fans very little to get excited about, wheeling out some of the most well worn clichés of the genre (in addition to some glaring stupidity from its protagonists).
This lack of originality continues right down to the very last shot which is guaranteed to elicit a groan from most viewers.A reasonable cast, competent direction from Tony Giglio, and just enough nudity (a sex scene and a skinny dip from Brianna Brown) and nasty gore (finger removal, flogging, an axe in the head, a decapitation) ensure that proceedings never become completely tiresome, but with so little in the way of genuine innovation, the whole thing ultimately proves to be a rather forgettable effort.
When the last scene is done and the credits are rolling I'm smiling because it was something I truly enjoyed and fulfilled my love for the horror genre.TV Character actor Josh Randall is the macho hero of the story.
In fact when it comes to slasher flicks in my opinion if it ain't broke don't fix it and this one uses a lot of the same material from other classic slasher flicks but some solid performances and a really good twist in the story makes this one a must see for horror fans like me.
The formula is more or less set in concrete, all that is left is the precise nature of the weirdos (inbred deformity, check; apparently nice person who is as bad as the rest, check; surprise twist person who you thought was going to help but turns out to be one of them, check) and the reason why the nice young people are being held - this turns out to be fairly original, and gives rise to some interesting script elements, which is one of the reasons why Timber Falls is a cut above the average for this kind of movie.Also, it generates quite a lot of suspense and tension, and a feeling that the two victims are in genuine jeopardy.
Worried for Sheryl Mike insists that Ida call for help but she doesn't & Mike becomes suspicious, Mike discovers that Ida is being held by a deformed freak in Ida's basement & that Ida & her husband Clyde (Nick Searcy) have a twisted plan for Mike & Sheryl...Co-written & directed by Tony Giglio this backwoods brutality horror thriller is watchable enough for it's type but it's not something that I would call great, a mixture of classic films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) & Wrong Turn (2003) without really adding anything new or particularly memorable.
The script is strictly routine in everything it does, the two big city civilized victims who take a wrong turn & make some bad decisions after which they end up at the mercy of inbred & or deformed Redneck or Hillbilly psycho's who torture them & abuse them for the remained of the film until they manage to turn the tables although here in Timber falls there's an awful twist ending in which the deformed mutant ends up at Mike & Sheryl's house over a year after he was supposedly killed.
Then there's the infamous head scratching scene in which after being threatened & robbed by three Hillbillies the couple actually carry on hiking & Sheryl amazingly makes Mike throw all the bullets from his gun away.To it's credit Timber Falls is well made & a pretty glossy looking film, the photography & lighting are slick, there's no CGI computer crap just good old fashion make-up effects & there's a definite backwoods feel although it's maybe a little bright at times.
The acting is alright, the two leads were cast for their looks while the two main psychos are pretty good.Timber Falls is a competent backwoods horror thriller that is well made, moves along at a decent pace & has a few nice torture scenes but a silly script that defies logic & common sense at times & a lack of originality prevent it from being anything more than merely watchable if there's nothing better to watch..
Still, why do I stick around and watch gore-filled movies like these that feature poor acting, poor script and poor judgment by every single character?
"Timber Falls" is fine if only for the one flaw that holds it down.**SPOILERS**Setting off on a nature hike, Mike, (Josh Randall) and Sheryl James, (Brianna Brown) are told by local Ida Forrester, (Beth Broderick) about a perfect trail for them to go on to have a good time.
"Timber Falls" is like a "Saw" movie without the charm.
We then go down the hopeless road of "why are horror movie characters so stupid?" This plays out several times, beginning with Sheryl's insistence that Mike get rid of the ammunition for his gun AFTER they have just been harassed by armed rednecks.
Even the most predictable campy horror movies are better than TIMBER FALLS..
Timber Falls is a 'B'movie horror with strengths and weaknesses that is far more likely to appeal to fans of the genre.What's to like?
You'll find an unrealistic little twist at the conclusion of the film.Timber Falls was, ultimately, a passable horror flick.