So I hate to admit it, but it’s going to be a challenge to write out this impressions piece. I feel like I could sum it up as ‘not worth watching, I was convinced it was a joke’. In the interest of trying to write out complete thoughts, here we go.

Redwood Massacre follows a group of young adults going to a house that is the famous site of a murder that happened 20 year prior. There is meant to be a gathering of people in the woods in order to ‘celebrate’ the incident. Along the way people from the group go missing, and they realize that the murders are not simply a thing of the past. The idea is not only played out, but in this case, horribly executed.

The first problem is the lack of backstory. There is a brief overview of what supposedly happened at the Redwood house. It comes late and is lacking to say the least. A man hears voices, kills his family, and somehow a member of the family comes back? I was actually extremely confused by what was supposed to be happening because it’s so poorly explained. Not only that but the time period becomes extremely bungled at this point. Going even further this is supposed to be a folk legend to keep kids from going into the woods. I like the idea of a folk legend come to life. However, it’s hard to get that right, and very easy to get wrong. This movie gets it wrong.

The group goes missing one by one, but this happens rapidly and with zero suspense or tension. Every time the killer shows up BAM someone dies that’s it. There is no suspense, no build up, and no real horror. Instead what we are left with is a lot of unrealistic gore. There are a few torture scenes, but they only simply highlight how much this film is lacking as even they don’t manage to be compelling. If you are going to make gore porn at least make interesting gore porn.

Finally we reach our climax. The final girl meets a briefly shown man who tries to fill in more plot holes, but still manages to explain next to nothing. We are given a boring climax with an unoriginal and poorly executed twist.

Well… I tried. The movie has no redeeming qualities. It’s boring, has no build up, no real horror, and it lacks any form of tension and suspense. I suppose I can give it credit for not having unnecessary sexual assault horror as a disturbingly large amount of modern horror does these days. Also our ‘final girl’ is worth cheering for. She is compassionate (even to our standard bitchy character), brave, and remains on guard and smart throughout.

Even as a fan of ‘bad’ horror, and a great lover of what I have termed ‘dumb but fun’ I couldn’t get into this movie. I don’t hate it, that would imply I had any strong reaction at all. It’s simply nothing. Also I am not kidding I spend most of my time watching this film convinced it was a poorly executed spoof on horror. I am still not certain if it’s very bad horror or very bad comedy.