As with any mid budget, British horror film it is contractually obliged to star either Sean Pertwee or Danny Dyer; here we have Sean taking some young offenders out on a weekend to get to grips with nature on a remote Scottish island. Things are bound to go wrong.Now I should point out this is a small film; and it is happy to be what it is. There is no explosions, fireworks, monsters, statements on the human conditions or clever twists. It is a very simple thriller with the rough edges being obscured by British grit.When I saw the cover I expected this to be gruelling and hard hitting. It really isn't, I would happily watch this with my dad.There is some solid acting, some of the characters are interesting and because it plays low there is real tension as the characters try to escape.Most importantly it doesn't outstay its welcome. There is only so long you can watch someone run around a forest scared before you lose interest. The director got it spot on time wise.Good solid, kick about the park, horror flick.

In juvenile detention, inmate Dave commits suicide after being abused with his friend Lindsay by bullies Steve and Lewis.The governor sends them to an uninhabited island to improve their relationships under the command of monitor Jed. They meet another camp with female juveniles under the command of veteran soldier Louise and they camp in another area. They are attacked by a pack of dogs and a mysterious man with a cross-bow, wearing camouflage, they join forces fighting to survive under the leadership of Callum, a new inmate....For a horror film, released straight to DVD, which expresses on the cover how much gore is in the film and features a key character with body parts missing, its a pretty good, well made movie.And that's thanks to the brilliant cast involved in the film. Pertwee and Reid are good, but its Kebbel and Wight who really shine, especially Wight, as you instantly despise his character, proving that he is a great actor.The rest of the support is a little generic, you get your giant with the heart of gold, and the inclusion of another female camp is just there to upset the apple cart, as just a camp of angry boys would be a little bit boring.The film almost plays like a Neil Marshall movie, and when we get the final revelation, it doesn't hit as hard as it would like to.But other than that, its solid stuff, the second act is tense, and like the cover says, its gruesome, but not in your face like other gore movies released in 2006.Cruelly overlooked on initial release, if you find this movie on TV, or streaming, watch it, especially if you like slasher movies of the eighties

I'm not really the outdoors type. Spending a weekend living in a tent, eating beans out of a tin and shitting in a hole I've had to dig myself sounds like pure hell. I've been to Leeds Festival and that was enough. I only went to Scouts once so that my mate Si could get a badge for bringing a friend. Camping in the woods seems horrific before you've thrown in the psycho-killers and mutants that dominate the wilderness survival sub-genre. Opening like a gritty seventies borstal movie, low-budget Brit-horror Wilderness evolves into a deliciously bloody fusion of Deliverance and Lord Of The Flies. Following the suicide of one of their fellow inmates, a group of teens from a young offenders institute are taken to an uninhabited former military island for a spot of team building. Unsurprisingly, they're not alone. Pursued by a psycho with a crossbow, what begins as a lesson in life skills quickly descends into a battle for survival.A typically British take on survival horror, Wilderness avoids the well-worn inbred slasher cliché, preferring an antagonist that's much closer to home. There's a reason why they're under attack, and as the survivors are picked off one by one, they begin to turn on each other as they look for someone to blame for the perilous situation. Soon they're fighting among themselves in a desperate bid to make it off the island alive. Laden with gore and wince-inducing death scenes (like when the boys' adult supervisor is eaten by a pack of dogs), Wilderness is a refreshingly entertaining movie. Brutally realistic, it amps up the institutionalised horror of movies like Scum to new levels. A tense, atmospheric outing into the dark side of the countryside, it sure ain't no boy scouts picnic.

It must be said, that if you can take a few good young up and coming actors, and pair them with a couple of solid older pro's, stick em' in a forest and chase them around, nine out of ten times you're going to get a pretty decent slasher. By no means is this film a seminal piece of work for anyone involved, and it barely registers on the radar in terms of top examples of the genre, but that said, this is an enjoyable ride. The young actors do well to flesh out there characters, given the limited information we are given. These kids are all borstal rejects who have committed violent crimes and as such do well to get us to care about their fates. Toby Kebbell shows us the early promise which he is now beginning to fulfill, and Sean Pertwee is always good value but it's Steven Wight who steals the show with his nastiest of the nasties Steve. Some of the other actors fare less well, Ben Mckay is whiny and annoying, more so than the part requires and Stephen Don is horribly miscast as the father of one of the young boys at the borstal. For a low budget British effort though, this is fun and well executed, and should be a platform for everyone to do better work.