DEAD WOOD is a terrible indie horror flick from Britain. It apparently took four years to get made and you can see why. As usual, a bunch of campers head off into the woods where they discover a mysterious girl before being stalked by persons unknown. This plays out as a slow moving drama with virtually no horror content whatsoever. There's no sense of menace here, just tedium with extraneous chit chat and dragged-out plotting.

An independent British horror that left me with bitter feelings. I mean, it could have been so good wasn't it for the fact that here nothing really happens. Well, there are things happening but it all starts too late and no blood flows, maybe some parts are a bit scary but it then you are too far into the movie to be surprised. It isn't really a slasher it's more about the supernatural. And indeed, dead wood is the exact word for it. Some kind of ghost appears and make people disappear into trees. The effect is quite effective and that's what people are talking about but as I said, it's bin too late. You are waiting for things to happen, for example, like the girl getting undressed, just when the boobies should be in site they cut over to another part of the story, I mean, if you tease us with nudity than give it. Also that there isn't really blood in it makes it fail too. It's sad, as so many films, it starts of pretty well but then Dead Wood becomes really a dead wood.

Four young morons go for a camping trip in the English woods. But instead of having undisturbed fun with the ol' in-out (during which they can enrich the world with even more moronic offspring), they end up becoming trees. Tolkien would have protested vehemently.Human-tree mergers in cinema have always fascinated me. From a very young age - indeed since I was a very young tree-spotting boy - the idea of having Oriental wood-witches turn horny young couples into semi-retarded, mute pseudo-Ents had tickled my fancy like no other floral or even non-floral concept. My imagination ran wild as I pictured myself becoming a plant - much like Sean Penn has been since his birth. What would it be like just to sit there and not ever have to think or eat food (much like Nicole Ritchie)? In particular was I interested how these bored magical forest women do this with the aid of cheesy CGI. Naturally, there was no CGI when I was growing up, but then again why should this IMDb comment have any more logic than this unique little British horror flick? The Oriental witch, played by the rather cute bad actress Nina Kwok, springs out of nowhere one day, informing the two bad-acting white couples that "her boyfriend had disappeared" and that she is cold and hungry. Someone suggests - quite foolishly! - that they call the police, but because most horror-film couples are rather brave morons, this strange notion of informing authorities of the disappearance of a person in the middle of nowhere gets quickly discarded and pooh-poohed upon by the majority. Hooray for horror-movie democracy. Apparently, Common Sense 101 and Wanting To Survive Forrest Demons 500 are courses that are never taught to horror-film couples.One of the characters is called "Milk". Don't ask me why. My intellect is too small to comprehend the limitless depths of profundity that is to be found in every pore of this tree-based horror-fest.Naturally, the fact that Kwok lost her entire boyfriend (all parts of him, including the only copy of the movie's script, which was stapled to his derrière) doesn't cause too much distress in our merry band of bad young actors. Soon enough, the missing boyfriend is as passé as bell-bottoms and punk music, and no-one gives him (or his obvious questionable existence) half a thought anymore. Hence it's time for the non-nerdy guy to go skinny-dipping with the grief-stricken-yet-casually-flirtatious Kwok, while his very blond girlfriend watches them with very mild contempt (bordering on disinterest). Hmm… Funnily enough, one of the skinny-dips ends up with the TOTALLY UNEXPECTED drowning of the blond's beau. The blond being a movie blond, she does not suspect at all that Kwok might have had something to do with the death of her boyfriend: after all, Kwok was only a meter away from him when he was last seen alive. At this point, the other unintelligent, sex-starved couple rejoins the group, and someone yet again comes up with the utterly silly idea of leaving the forest and searching for the police. Two boyfriends are already missing, but this doesn't seem to phase our underpaid (or overpaid?) dilettante thespians. Nothing can ruin their cheerful optimism: they're happy just to be in a movie.Eventually Kwok tires of playing games with such low-IQ campers (it's just not fun playing with your food when it's this daft), and starts turning them into trees. "Dead Wood". Get it? Dead wood. Wood is sort of dead, the bad actors are nearly all dead, hence their CGI merger with the trees means they're "dead wood". Plus, of course, the paper on which this movie's script was hurriedly written is made out of dead wood, and the ideas contained in the script itself are just as dead as the paper they were written on – which is wood-based, as I mentioned earlier.I can well imagine that the trees aren't too happy about having to accommodate such morons into their "dead wood", but the movie - though deep as it undoubtedly is intellectually - does not address this matter at all. Kwok never asks any of the trees if they'd volunteer to let humans become part of their trunks. There is a tree-hugging environmentalist message that could have been pursued here, and I think it would have made the movie a masterpiece. Alas, as it is, we only have a brilliant movie on our hands here, but not one good enough to quite compete with the likes of "The Godfather" or "Star Wars".Am looking forward to the sequel. "Dead Wood 2: Not Worth The Dead Paper It's Written On".

Saw this at Phantasmagoria. It's an ultra-low budget British horror film about a group of young campers who get lost in the woods but thankfully don't get picked off by a man in a mask. Instead what starts out as a fairly standard slasher setup turns into a creepy and rather effective supernatural horror film. It's actually pretty scary in places too! The excellent writing and fantastic actors help a lot too as you really get to know and like the characters before they get into the story. But the real surprises in this film are the mind-blowing special effects used sparingly for maximum effect. The film is a real achievement and definitely one for horror fans to look out for.