The Barrens (2012)

Fantastic!

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Hoping to reconnect together, an estranged family on a camping trip in the Pine Barrens learn the local legend involving the Jersey Devil is real when the voracious creature appears and forces the family to deal with it to escape the woods.This here is one of the more frustrating and problematic creature features around as there was a chance to do something special here. The setting here is a dark, creepy forest ripe with really terrifying layouts that are perfect for unleashing a voracious creature, it's quite a decent-looking creature with quite a chilling back-story to begin with, and there's some fun to be had when it gets the family lost in the back-part of the woods along the later half, but instead this one tends to involve a slew of increasingly bizarre and outright unnecessary subplots that make this one seem to go on forever. Adding in the usual family drama is more than enough and never really adds much new material to be influenced by this tactic, which feels like a continuation of the clichés anyway, yet the fact that there's so much extra happening going on here that the beginning to this one is so hard to get into it seems to go on forever dealing with the family issues, teen angst, the dead dog and the quest for closure about his father just makes for a tough time overall. All these subplots simply cause the actual attacks to get pushed back so much that the fun attacks in that second half come so late their inclusion is almost an afterthought and a case for being too little, too late to save this one from the potential it could've had about chasing down the revelers in the forest and them getting caught in the middle the way this starts off as, but even without this plot the beast itself and the action in the final half when he's mad and delirious do make this one somewhat interesting and save it somewhat.Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and children-in-jeopardy.

For some sort, I'm kinda intrigue with this movie that I decided to rent and watch it. The story, okay, its unique! The actors were good in their acting! But I think, something is really missing at first that you as a viewer will hold on to the movie, guessing if its really happening or not. Making you fool until the ending really?? I do enjoy this, but actually made me disappointed as well like in some movies that had its same genre. I actually like how the story become twisted. The turn of events do made me oh really? But the ending, really I don't know? I think I'm not convinced. When I'm able to see some deleted scenes that its DVD has. Well when I watched it, kinda relief but why with the movie? I think because its not actually possible. But I can say, I did enjoy the ride!

There is legend that the Jersey Devil lives in the titular woods. It came about after a woman had 13 children, but she offered up the 13th child to the Devil so she and her other children didn't have to leave their house. The Vineyard family are going to camp there so the father can release his father's ashes. But while there, they hear that someone has gone missing, and the father thinks it's the work of the Jersey Devil. They move camp site to get away from the rest of the campers only to find that they're in more trouble than they were before. Is the legend of the Jersey Devil real, or is it just another story.....I wanted to give this movie a chance, because the director knows how to deliver a slick horror movie, and the cast wasn't half bad.What I got was just another generic horror movie, where the main protagonist is assumed as being bonkers, but all his fears and rants are real, because hey, there goes that awful CG beast.Moyer is okay as the troubled lead, but toward the end, I was more concerned about wiping his eyes than the danger to him or his family. Supporting characters are just your typical fodder for the beast, and the little boy does the worst scared impression when he sees the decomposing dog.It's like a really watered down version of The Shining, minus the tension, the scares, and the plausibility.There is nothing to redeem this film, it looks cheap, and the cast look very disinterested.If I ever want to see anything about the Jersey Devil, I'll stick to that X-Files episode.On the plus side, its the best film ever made about rabies induced hallucinations.

Darren Lynn Bousman directed some of the more watchable Saw sequels and the cult, horror sci-fi rock opera Repo! The Genetic Opera. Since then, his movies just get worse and worse. After his barely okay Mother's Day, I didn't have high hopes for this movie but it still managed to disappoint me.True Blood actor Stephen Moyer stars as an upper middle class family man that drags his wife, teenage daughter, and pre-adolescent son out camping to the same place he used to go with his father. Once they arrive at a heavily populated camp site, he immediately begins acting crazier and crazier but this doesn't seem to concern his family, who agree to follow him even deeper into the woods. Along the way, he is haunted by visions of local legend the Jersey Devil, a man eating demon spawn that supposedly stalks the woods.Not much of The Barrens makes sense and Stephen Moyer's performance is just terrible. He plays the whole film in the same note of crazed, squinting intensity. He rants, pops pills, shoves his kids, and throws jealous temper tantrums at his wife so frequently that he makes Jack Nicholson in The Shining seem balanced. It's completely unbelievable that his family wouldn't be more concerned by his insanity.Mia Kirshner of The Black Dahlia and The L Word and the rest of his family are better, but they're not given enough personality to impress. Erik Knudson, of Scream 4, Saw 2, and Jericho is also great is a supporting role as a skate punk the daughter befriends and he steals every scene he's in but he doesn't have much screen time.Aside from a cool looking creature, which may or may not only exist in the father's imagination, there's not much to The Barrens and it just limps along like a wounded hiker for the first hour. Things pick up in the last 30 minutes but it's too little too late and down ending seems forced and, like the rest of the movie, has some major logic issues. I just really can't recommend this movie to anyone.