Per Amazon: What happens when you mix Deliverance with Friday the 13th and a touch of the Breakfast Club, the result is Black Water Wilderness, a pulsating pounding action horror set in the frightening and dark backwoods of Alabama. Going camping in the woods will never be the same.
That's overselling it, as if the grammar didn't give it away. But there was still quite a bit I liked about Black Water Wilderness. It's definitely a horror film, but it makes a marked effort to try to throw a little story and teen angst in there too. Black Water Wilderness is no masterpiece by any means, and it's low budget seams show at times. But it's still a pleasant enough offering with it's heart in the right place.
My Synopsis: A big group of friends (like 10?) are nearing the end of high school, and go on a camping trip together. Partying ensues. But as you would expect, there is a killer in their midst.
Elaborate Genre: Indie Slasher
Overall: Good enough-ish.
The most noticeable thing about Black Water Wilderness is that you actually kind of like the characters. Usually, you expect any "teens party in the woods" type movies to be filled with hateful assholes, but here they seem pretty normal. There is a little bad behavior and conflict, but generally speaking they are likable and realistic. Which goes a *long* way towards making me give a shit about what happens.
There's also the right number of characters. The acting in the film isn't the best (for a lot of people in the film it's their only acting credit), but there are enough characters and moving parts that no one gets overexposed. It also gives the killer a good number of potential victims, and keeps things moving at a decent pace.
As far as the kills go? Eh - this isn't really the kind of movie that revels in gore, and I don't think it's particularly interested in crazy or creative kills. The vast majority of what you see is a "knife is clean, is stabbed out of frame, comes back in bloody" sort of thing. But the wounds you do see just do not look good. So maybe it's for the best. And honestly it doesn't feel like writer/director Micheal William Gordon is super interested in the kills, and they never really feel like a focal point. It's sort of a weird angle to take on what is ostensibly a slasher film. But the other stuff works well enough that you can give it a pass.
The big bad isn't overly memorable, but does the job. I have often lamented that films sometimes half-ass the explanations for their killers; I either want a good explanation or nothing at all. Black Water Wilderness goes the latter route, and it works just fine. The only hint of an explanation is that these kids stole a cooler of his beer, which is honestly one of the funnier motivations for a slasher that I've come across. (Doubly so when you consider it was Natural Ice.) Although you get the feeling that this guy was just going to kill them anyways. And for a while he's wearing sniper camouflage (that really mossy/full body stuff), so if you squint he kind of looks like bigfoot killing people with a hunting knife. Which is a movie I'd totally see.
Oh, and the music is pretty good too. I actually did a little digging around and couldn't find the soundtrack anywhere, but I'd definitely give it a listen if it was available. The song playing over the opening credits is really good - when coupled with the nice aerial shots, it makes things seem more grandiose/big budget than they actually are. But it sets a good tone for things - you can tell that the filmmakers are at least trying, which is more than you can say for a lot of "teens in the woods" slashers.
Overall, I rather liked Black Water Wilderness. Yeah, it's cheap looking sometimes and doesn't really deliver in what you want in a slasher film (tension, nudity, gore). But it tries something different and has enough likable characters that it's pretty easy to enjoy, even if it's not in any kind of deep way.
I would probably recommend this film.
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