RELEASED IN 2014 and written & directed by Christopher Denham, "Preservation" chronicles events in the forests north of Los Angeles when two brothers & one of their wives embark on a camping trip in a closed preservation. Horror ensues when they are literally marked by some creepy pranksters... or is the culprit one of them? Pablo Schreiber & Aaron Staton play the brothers while Wrenn Schmidt plays the wife.
This is a competently made slasher-in-the-woods flick with a fairly engaging story, convincing actors, nice locations, a professional score and all-around effective filmmaking. It doesn't hurt that Wrenn is easy on the eyes. There are predictable aspects, like the red herring in the latter first act, not to mention obvious elements borrowed from similar films, like "Deliverance," "Eden Lake," "Rambo 2," "I Spit on Your Grave" and even "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2." Yet these things don't really harm the movie because they're pretty much par for the course in low-budget independent horror like this.
Unfortunately, the film is ruined by constant "Yeah, right" moments, like a character turning his/her back on a wounded adversary, which I counted happening four times (!); and what occurred at the campsite is absurd. Another example is the way people constantly do noisy things in the quiet of the woods without the other person(s) hearing, like climbing on top of a porta potty. Why Sure!
The director is clearly a professional-class filmmaker, but he needs to learn to work out implausible kinks in his screenplays, which just cause any viewer over 12-13 to roll-their-eyes. Maybe he should hire a writer, at least for fine-tuning scripts. It's a matter of using more imagination. The reason "Deliverance" (1972) is still talked about today is precisely because everything in it was BELIEVABLE. Nevertheless, there's a lot of good in "Preservation" and I encourage fans of the horror-in-the-woods genre to check it out.
THE FILM RUNS 1 hours & 27 minutes and was shot in Santa Clarita & Los Angeles, California.
GRADE: C/C- (4.5/10)
This is a competently made slasher-in-the-woods flick with a fairly engaging story, convincing actors, nice locations, a professional score and all-around effective filmmaking. It doesn't hurt that Wrenn is easy on the eyes. There are predictable aspects, like the red herring in the latter first act, not to mention obvious elements borrowed from similar films, like "Deliverance," "Eden Lake," "Rambo 2," "I Spit on Your Grave" and even "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2." Yet these things don't really harm the movie because they're pretty much par for the course in low-budget independent horror like this.
Unfortunately, the film is ruined by constant "Yeah, right" moments, like a character turning his/her back on a wounded adversary, which I counted happening four times (!); and what occurred at the campsite is absurd. Another example is the way people constantly do noisy things in the quiet of the woods without the other person(s) hearing, like climbing on top of a porta potty. Why Sure!
The director is clearly a professional-class filmmaker, but he needs to learn to work out implausible kinks in his screenplays, which just cause any viewer over 12-13 to roll-their-eyes. Maybe he should hire a writer, at least for fine-tuning scripts. It's a matter of using more imagination. The reason "Deliverance" (1972) is still talked about today is precisely because everything in it was BELIEVABLE. Nevertheless, there's a lot of good in "Preservation" and I encourage fans of the horror-in-the-woods genre to check it out.
THE FILM RUNS 1 hours & 27 minutes and was shot in Santa Clarita & Los Angeles, California.
GRADE: C/C- (4.5/10)