Laid-back Jon (amiable Seth Foster) and his more high-strung buddy Gus (a solid performance by Charles Miller) find themselves being hounded by a strange force in a deserted woodland area. They seek shelter at a cabin owned by the friendly Marcie (an appealing portrayal by Elly Koslo) as well as eventually discover that they are unwilling participants in a secret government experiment.Director Donald M. Jones, who also co-wrote the compelling script with James C. Lane, relates the intriguing offbeat story at a steady pace, makes nice use of the remote sylvan locations, draws the two main characters with depth, and ably crafts an absorbing enigmatic atmosphere. The pretty polished cinematography by Jones presents lots of striking surreal images while the low-fi (not so) special effects possess a certain funky dimestore charm. Although a tad slow and often perplexing, this genuinely bizarre outing is still worth a watch just the same.

i liked this a lot when i saw it a few years ago as a rip i found on usenet. i really dug the relaxed 70s vibe and taste of nature. the graphics are terrible but the concept works as well as any old star trek episode with force fields and weird powerful forces and cheap visual effects."the cabin in the woods" included a bit more of a background mythos and motivation, but it's like... the only thing i thought of as soon as it revealed that it had a force field and creatures would be vaporized if the touched it or whatever was that it was a rip off of... that movie... that had the... cabin in the woods... and then the guy found the source of it all and whatever.

Two men are in the woods fleeing something. They're in the mountains, and can't see any of the towns they think they should be able to see. They find an isolated cabin and a woman, Marcie, invites them in. They can't really describe what they were fleeing - something that tore up their camp, a tall glowing red light that covers the trees and sky accompanied by a strange sound.One of the men, Gus, occasionally sees a sort of computer graphic of a black square in a tunnel of light, or something like that. When he sleeps, he dreams in green and white of a child in a cemetery with a priest and an older man. His dream switches to blue and white, then natural colors and stills of himself, his friend, and Marcie appear.They try to find a restaurant Marcie said was nearby, but come across a man in a car with a flat tire. He was trying to land his Cessna nearby, then came across the abandoned car. He's in ill health, and they go back and get Marcie, then proceed to the restaurant which is "Closed Permanently." They find the Cessna, and Gus takes off on his own Marcie, the car, and the dead man disappear.Gus gets into some trouble with the plane, and after he lands he finds a short pyramid near a fence. He initially can't enter, but then is able to go into an underground series of white halls with red doors. People and things start appearing and disappearing more often, and he's told something (not much) about Project Touchstone. From there it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. At one point, there's a large disembodied glowing green face with red eyes that seemed awfully familiar, yet from where I don't recall.For its low budget and small cast, they did achieve something interesting, but ultimately I don't know what to make of it.