A Ho-Hum Haunted Forest

1 star

A horror movie set in a Halloween maze.

If that’s the premise of your film, the first thing you need to do is come up with a new angle or twist, something that will separate the story you’re telling from the dozens of other horror movies set in a Halloween maze.

Maybe make it more gory? Or more scary? Fill the screen with shock and awe.

Maybe step away from the gore and make your movie more of a psychological thriller than a straight-up horror movie? All the terror without all that blood.

Maybe just use the old horror-movie trope of a Halloween maze as a red herring and give your audience something completely different.

Or you could make The Haunted Forest.

Written and directed by Keith Boynton (The Scottish Play), The Haunted Forest tells the story of Zach (Grayson Gwaza), a privileged prep school kid who spends his class time drawing horror comics. His uncle Mark (Cedric Gegel), who owns the popular seasonal attraction of the title, hires Zach to dress up and jump out to scare visitors walking through the woods. What starts as harmless fun turns deadly serious when one of Zack’s coworkers is found hanging from a zip line.

So far, so familiar. 

Boynton teases his audience with a few new ideas in The Haunted Forest. The way he brings Zach’s comic-book images to life is probably the most effective part of the film, but he never fully integrates them into the story. They are entertaining, but ultimately just distracting. He also touches on the idea that being exposed to real violent death makes Zach question his love of horror comics and movies, but again fails to follow up on it in any meaningful way. 

Instead, Boynton falls back on the expected, bringing in a hastily cobbled-together cult to wreak mild havoc on the innocent. There’s hardly any blood, barely any tension, and not a bit of originality. The cult gets destroyed, the good guys win, and whatever lesson the director wants viewers to take away from it all is summed up in Zach’s switch from drawing horror comics to drawing cheesy romance comics. 

The End.