Director – Peter Kominek (Slug Brothers, Timber)
Starring – Shelby Cox-Dersch (Karma, B*tch), Mitchel Roelfsema (Faultline, Don’t Kill the Babysitter), and Vanessa Wenzel (Falling Through the Cracks: Greg’s Story, Tribal)
Release Date – 2025
Rating – 1/5
I try to keep an eye out for movies that might peak my interest and I never know where that may be. It could be an email from a press release or randomly through a Facebook message. A few weeks ago I was looking through one of the indie horror groups on Facebook when I saw a post for the 2025 film The Sticks.
The post was announcing that it was now available to stream on Tubi. The artwork really caught my attention and I quickly added it to my watch list. After I made my way through that Exorcismo set from Severin, I decided to watch a couple indie horror flicks with The Sticks included.
**Spoiler Alert** The film follows a young woman with a knack for survival as she finds herself lost in the woods alone. She had originally planned on camping with her boyfriend but something happened forcing her to flee alone. Now, she is forced to survive as something lurking in the woods is hunting her. **Spoiler Alert**
I went into The Sticks seriously excited thinking I was about to see a creature feature set in the woods. Sadly, that was not the film in front of me at all. In fact, the film that I saw just followed a woman as she stumbled and panicked in the woods while showing off her camping and survival skills. I’ve seen a lot of dull films over the years but this has to be the most boring indie horror film I’ve seen in recent memory.
The acting in this one is very one sided. Shelby Cox-Dersch carries the film. The cast is rather small but most of the film, at least an hour of the film’s run time, is Cox-Dersch alone surviving in the woods. The supporting cast is solid for the little screen time they do get but it’s Cox-Dersch that carries the film. With that being said, her character is not that likable and it’s hard to tell if it was just the way she was written, how she was portrayed, or if it was intentional.
The story for this one somewhere in there but I couldn’t find it. From what I could see, the film is meant to depict a woman running from a supernatural creature but the film started out with flashbacks of camping before we saw the young lady running through the woods for no apparent reason. Maybe I missed something or maybe this is one of those films where you needed to be high as balls but I couldn’t make heads or tales from it.
Finally, the film has some great make-up effects but that is the extent of what we will see in this one. I was hoping the creature from the poster would make an appearance but it doesn’t. That is if I didn’t miss it. Overall, The Sticks is one of those indie horror films that confuses the fuck out of me. What is the purpose of the film and where is the story? Honestly, I don’t know if I missed something extremely important when I was watching it or the film fell apart during filming. Regardless, I can’t recommend this one. Skip it.
