Dead Wood

I watched this film on cable not long ago and found it surprisingly enjoyable and diverting. Though the characters were not exactly likable they were engaging. I don't think I would have been as taken with the film had it been on the big screen; it is a claustrophobic film and that sense of claustrophobia, with the woods all about, is helped by the intimate venue, the lights low, the house quiet. The film would have benefited from a better ending, but that's a common failing in most horror films where ignorant people have deadly encounters with the unknown...even in high budget films there is a failure of the imagination, so that the unknown becomes the unknowable, usually manifested as the unfathomable. The film could have been much better, but the filmmakers took the easy way out of the corner into which they painted themselves...like so many others who lacked the strength to dream. But the film, for what it is, is not bad.