Thomas Smith's Backwoods

Cody checks out a new slasher movie.

Last year, I wrote about director Thomas Smith's Demon Squad, a film that caught my interest through the fact that it was a blend of the film noir, horror, and fantasy genres. Now Smith's new film Backwoods has been released, and this one caught my attention because it happens to be part of my favorite sub-genre of horror: it's a slasher movie.

Backwoods stars Isabella Alberti as high school cheerleader Molly, and when we first see her she has been trapped in the trunk of a car by a man wearing an owl mask. Molly manages to escape from the trunk, running off into the woods with the masked man in pursuit. But this person wearing the mask is not the one who will be doing the slashing. The back story of how Molly ended up in that trunk is told through flashbacks, and dialogue in the flashbacks also establishes the legend of the slasher we'll be meeting.

Back in the '80s, a serial killer called the Hangman stalked the forest in Hangman's Hollow, killing any male who wandered into his territory and capturing the female trespassers, keeping them as his "brides". The Hangman was eventually killed by police, but it's rumored that there could be a Hangman Jr. out there in the woods. The woods that Molly and the masked man have run into. I assume the slasher they encounter is meant to be Hangman Jr.; I'll be honest, the identity of this person wasn't quite clear to me, because I didn't understand why he appears to be a deformed mutant creature. When we see the actual Hangman in a flashback, he looks like a regular guy, despite being an "inbred weirdo". Why would his offspring look like something out of the Hills Have Eyes remake? There's also speculation that the ghost of the Hangman is roaming the woods, but again, why would his ghost look like a mutant? There were issues with the sound on the screener copy I watched, but I don't think I missed an explanation for the Hangman's appearance in the dialogue.

Regardless of the mystery of his looks, the Hangman character is well played by Scott Alan Warner, and he gets to knock off teens in some cool ways. Just a few teens; this isn't the sort of slasher that's packed with bloody murder. Aside from some quick death in the Hangman legend flashback, we're deep into the 70 minute running time before the Hangman gets any killing done.

The majority of the film focuses on a love triangle of sorts that involves Molly, her quarterback boyfriend Hunter (Matthew McCoy), and her waterboy friend Noah (Michael Anthony Bagozzi). Add in the fact that Molly's sister Olive (played by Isabella Alberti's real life sister Angelina Alberti) has an unrequited crush on Noah and you could call this a love square. Some twisted things happen in that group, and it's always nice when a horror movie - particularly a slasher - pays attention to its characters, but there times in Backwoods when it felt like the character drama was overwhelming the slasher element. When characters are discussing the problems they have with each other while they're sitting inside a mutant slasher's murder shack, it comes off like they're not too concerned about the presence of the mutant slasher. Some slasher fans are probably going to wish the movie was just about the Hangman knocking people off at the party Molly, Hunter, Noah, and Olive attend.

Backwoods has some issues, some things weren't clear to me and I was hoping for more slashing, but the movie still works as it is, and the story of the teens plays out in an interesting way. It's worth checking out, just don't expect a large body count.

The film was given a VOD release and can be viewed on iTunes, Prime Video, VUDU, Google Play, Vimeo, Fandango Now, PlayStation, Microsoft store, and YouTube, plus cable and satellite providers.