Chiller Minis: Deep in the Woods

In a series of miniature reviews for the blog, I decided to write about films recorded from DirecTV’s horror/thriller channel, CHILLER (Scary Good) last week when we had it (among a list of other channels) free. Deep in the Woods has Sean Patrick Thomas as this physician from The Big City wanting to settle in a nicely quaint, small-population village. Well, the village has a secret, and its citizenry are a major part of keeping quiet about it. An oddball neighbor, Phil Deighton (Dean Stockwell) and his troubled son (Anthony Del Negro) could very well reveal the secret to Thomas’ Dr. Michael Cayle, but in doing so a heavy price would cost them for unveiling such information. Phil’s wife has a nasty scar are on her face and to save Cayle (or his wife and daughter, played by Kristen Bush and Athena Grant) from a similar fate, he is told to sacrifice an animal over a certain spot (flat stump of a cut large tree in the forest behind his house) to wilderness creatures (called isolates) in order to maintain a safe existence in the village. Any sort of independence that would enrage the creatures results in grisly death (i.e.,ripped to shreds), so keeping them happy seems to be the ideal thing to do. Well, there wouldn’t be a horror show if the little wilderness monsters were all appeased and satisfied. Soon Cayle is at odds with the beasties (they honestly reminded me of slightly larger Zuni dolls crossed with the cannibals from Offspring) who have killed locals such as a lovely blond woman who came on to him a few times and neighbors who may have said too much to him in the means to warn him away from the village. A wife pregnant and hand prints all over his daughter’s room (and on his daughter), Cayle has plenty to worry about. He’s only kept alive because of his medical skills and once they are no longer needed, what will Cayle be able to do? With plenty of “television doom score” orchestrating every last attempted suspense scare and some decent gore (body damage by the monsters) are what you get with this one. The plot itself: it is what it is. Butt ugly ghoulies from the woods and Thomas trying to figure out how to stop them. There’s a “plucked from the ass cheeks” twist involving Thomas’ wife that tries to haunt us as the film closes, but this is all rather bland, familiar stuff…the town with a secret and that secret revealing itself to have teeth. Despite how the monsters look, the film wears its face dead serious. This never escapes “television movie of the week” in its look or feel.