RG
Roberto Giacomelli
•Five friends decide to go on a hike through the forests of Miranda Forest, but after an accident caused by a woman suddenly appearing on the road, the minibus they are traveling in becomes unusable. Lost in the heart of the forest, the five friends split up: two stay on the road to help the girl who was hit and in the hope that someone will pass by; the other three venture into the woods in search of help. But an ancient legend tells that those woods are inhabited by some beautiful maidens, fallen angels, banished from paradise for letting themselves be contaminated by desire and lustful passion, and now condemned to wander the earth in search of victims.
"The Cursed Forest" is yet another bad film distributed by Italian Gargoyle Video directly for the home video market. It is an English film directed in 2005 by independent director Johannes Roberts (already the author of "Darkhunters") which starts from a very interesting and quite original idea, that is, making the film's antagonists a group of angels banished from paradise who have taken on the appearance of provocative girls completely naked who first seduce humans and then feast on their bodies in disgusting orgies of blood. This plot could foreshadow an exhilarating blend of sex and gore, but unfortunately the director seems not to have had the courage (or the freedom) to fully exploit the "sex & gore" themes, directing an anemic show in which scenes of stupid boys wandering through the woods alternate with the fleeting appearances of the 3 (or more) fallen angels.
Incredibly, despite the potential of a story that is original in some ways, the film at some points ends up copying or almost plagiarizing other better-known films: when two of the protagonists find a house in the woods, apparently uninhabited, they begin to explore it, finding only signs of the owner's imbalance and remains of corpses; until the owner arrives (a Tom Savini never so out of place as in this film) who begins to slaughter their dead friend, while the two watch helplessly as the scene unfolds hidden under the table. Well, this sequence cannot but remind one of "Wrong Turn", which had already shown two years earlier, a practically identical spectacle, albeit much more professional and well-orchestrated. But the copies do not end there! There is a lot of "The Blair Witch Project" (shoulder-mounted and dark forest shots) and even something from "Kill Bill" (a lip torn off by a bite), as well as a plethora of horror clichés, ranging from the crazy gas station attendant who foreshadows (in a very unconventional way) the imminent danger, to the usual foray into the house of horrors inhabited by a psychopathic hick, to the now inevitable car accident that forces the characters to seek help and encounter mortal danger.
It is useless to dwell on the artistic poverty of the actors, consisting of mostly unknown young people here in their debut, and the lack of even a scrap of psychological delineation of their protagonists, as well as a series of photo novel dialogues, classic signs of a hastily written screenplay by incompetent people. In the cast, one can appreciate the cameos of some stars such as the already mentioned horror makeup wizard Tom Savini, Dan Van Husen (actor of so many B-movies in the 70s) in the role of the gas station attendant and the writer Shaun Huston in the role of himself in a "Misery"-style ending.
The gore department, as previously mentioned, gives us very little, concentrating everything in the finale with a disembowelment and a severed head, thus leaving even those who at least hoped for some red-blooded trash with a dry mouth; a characteristic common to many recent independent films.