This movie has gotten mixed reviews, so I didn't know what to expect. I can't say I really rave after seeing it, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I feared it might be, and there were some interesting things going on.

It is a mainly black production, so apparently that makes this "urban horror," despite being set in the woods and all the characters being relentlessly middle-class. Our story: 6 young, attractive black 20-somethings head out to a cabin in the woods to party with some of their friends, and instead are reminded why black people never go into the woods. At heart, this is a slasher where the heros are spoiled, horny black kids instead of spoiled, horny white kids - though it was nice to see a general absence of stereotypes. There is some mish-mash of stuff cribbed from other recent horror fads, but none of that really hangs together very well.

However, the acting is generally good - the skills of the main cast is several cuts above the quality in your usual by-the-numbers direct to video slasher (the film premiered on BET). The script is feeble and the characters are all pretty bland, but everyone acquits themselves well. I was actually more impressed with the actors because they took a weak script and really sold it - and they pulled a lot that really shouldn't have worked. I was also impressed with the lighting: a lot of scenes are in big, dark spaces (inside and out), and you could actually see what was going on without things looking obviously lit. The direction and editing seemed quite competent and the movie looks polished.

The gore is pretty decent. There are some torture scenes that look pretty good. The tension wasn't what it might have been - there are a few too many scenes of people walking around rooms with the bad guy behind them, or above them, or in the next room, or unconscious on the floor - oops, he's not there anymore! Yawn. However, those kinds of scenes are tricky to set up and edit sensibly, so I give them credit there.

As a black-made horror movie, there is some fun stuff going on. I give nothing away by revealing that the white characters are basically cannon-fodder, which must have been fun for the film makers given the survival stats for token black friends in the horror genre.

There are some little things that really made this film interesting (to me at least). There is one scene where the local (white) sheriff walks in on two of our heros at the local kwiki-mart or whatever, and starts asking all these questions about who they are and why they're there. Now, our characters aren't street-thugs, they're middle-class college kids staying at their uncle's posh country house, so they know how to do the whole "yes sir, no sir" thing. Turns out the sheriff is buddies with the uncle, and suddenly he's like "oh, so that's all right then, I'll tell your uncle how gentlemanly you were introducing yourselves" or something like that. But then, having just undermined the racist-cop stereotype, while this whole exchange is going on there is the look on the (black) store clerk's face and the looks that pass between the black characters. Subtle, and interesting. (Like I said, the acting was really pretty good.) And there's the kids' reluctance to go to the sherrif (or anyone else) for help when their friends start disappearing, which is flatly chalked up to not wanting to scare the white people.

Of course, maybe that's just the 35 point IQ drop that occurs upon finding oneself in a horror movie - after all, their solution is to split up.

5 out of 10