Apparently based on true events, Hidden in the Woods is another backwoods hillbilly tale, this time lensed in Chile, giving it that extra Spanish exploitation flavour. And exploit it does – exploiting the female cast and the audience watching!
The film tells the story of two sisters, Ana and Anny and Anny, raised in forest isolation by their abusive, drug-dealing, maniac of a father after he kills their mother for being a “whore”. Subjected to rape and physical abuse (which leads to Anny giving birth to her father’s physically deformed child, Manuel, in one of the more gruesome, and loathsome, scenes in the film) the pair finally find freedom from their father when, after chainsawing two cops to death, he is arrested at a bus terminal waiting for drug kingpin Costello’s men. However the girls freedom is short-lived when Costello sends his henchmen into the woods to find and torture the girls to get information on where his 30 kilos of missing drugs are. However this is a family that lives by the coda of “All men are animals and you hunt animals to eat” and they’re not going down without a fight.
Much like the Frightfest 2012 opener The Seasoning House, this film features copious amounts of rape and violence towards women. Now that should make Hidden in the Woods as brutal and harrowing as the the aforementioned movie is right? Sadly thanks to ineptitude of the talent involved it isn’t, instead of being hard to watch the film ends up being laughable. How laughable? Well I thought Cockneys Vs. Zombies would win on the laughter scale – after all that film is a hilarious horror-comedy romp – however Valladares’ film wins hands down thanks to a ridiculous blowjob/cum-spitting montage that instead of making you feel empathy for Ana and the depths to which she has to sink to feed her family, leaves you literally thinking “what the fuck?!”
I could go on and on about the failures of Hidden in the Woods – from the near-unstoppable Jason Vorhees like father, to the ridiculous “dancing-imp” mannerisms of Manuel via a ridiculous cannibal-cookout dinner scene replete with dialogue as wooden as the table at which they eat. I hope the planned US remake produced by Micheal Biehn rectifies a lot of the films issues…
A misogynistic exploitation film made to shock and disgust, it fails on pretty much every level. A possible contender for worst of the festival.
This Was A review by Phil of Blogomatic 3000
Rating:18
UK Release: 24th August 2012 (Frightfest)
Directed by: Patricio Valladares
Cast: Agustin Aguero, Daniel Antivilo , Eric Bustos, Siboney Lo
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