I’ve passed Wake Wood several times on Amazon.com while browsing for horror films. Imagine my surprise when I realized it wasn’t a film about young men waking up… I decided to give it a shot because the cover art looked pretty good and the description made it sound even better. So, what did I think when I finally popped it in my DVD player last night? Read on to find out.
Wake Wood is a horror drama that’s written by Brendan McCarthy and David Keating, with David having directed this feature as well. The film stars Aidan Gillen (“Game of Thrones”), Eva Birthistle (“Waking The Dead”), Timothy Spall (“Wormtail” in the Harry Potter saga), Ruth Mccabe (“Silent Witness”), and Brian Gleeson (Snow White and The Huntsman).
Wake Wood is the story of two grieving parents, the father being a vet and the mother being a pharmacist. Shortly before the film takes place their only child was mawled to death by a wild dog. In attempt to deal with their grief and move on, the grieving couple moves to the town of Wake Wood. Do you see where this is going yet? Almost immediately they discover the remote town is far than what it seems. Paganism and fear rule the town, and the villiagers have a way to bring back the dead. How far will the parents go to bring back their daughter and at what costs?
Ok… My problem with Wake Wood is… I just didn’t get it. According to IMDB this Irish horror film holds a 5.5 rating based on 4,308 reviews; so obviously a lot of people enjoyed it. I’m probably one of the majority that didn’t. It just wasn’t developed well.
Wake Wood is not a full blown horror movie, but it never pretends to be. It does have chillingly captivating moments, but they are few and far between. Unfortunately the terrifying moments aren’t enough to keep viewers – most notably me – interested for very long.
If you add that fact to the fact that the film is very quiet, has a lot of talking, and is filmed with a weird IOS and filter then you’re left with a boring piece of cinema. Again, I just didn’t get it. I think I ended up turning Wake Wood off before I got to the ending.
This is an example of one of Hollywood’s oldest rules – you can have an amazing cast, but without a good script the whole thing will come out flat. I think if this had been a short film instead of a feature length I would have enjoyed it a lot more than I did.
I’d give it a 3.5 for it had the potential to be great, but just missed the mark on a lot of points. Very overrated too. Sorry :(
I felt the same way- it’s on Nflix and I watched it to my own disappointment. I guess I’m just not into sacrificial films, didn’t make my blog at all.