A Game In The Woods — A Game In The Woods( DVD)

From last year, A Game In The Woods is a backwoods thriller/ horror, with twists of often awkward humour. Think a low-budget/crude( oil) blend of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Most Dangerous Game, and Hostel- it'll give you an idea of what we have here. From Jinga Films, here’s a bare-bones DVD release of the picture.

A Game In The Woods was directed/ co-written by Houston-born Mike McCutchen. This is his second feature-length; his first was 2018’s The Next Kill, which is an action comedy serial killer film. Though he has seven special effects credits.

The film finds blond-haired social media addict Ash ( Elanor Numan), her crumpy/ uptight Asian lesbian girlfriend, and their into-jokes/ farting male friend heading out into the Texas countryside. They're going to check out the ranch of Ash’s recently passed away ranger grandfather, finding out that a decidedly deadly game is going on the land

Basically, a geeky/ uptight sports fan with large-framed glasses has set up a human hunt- where rich folk pay to track down their prey. Each wears a wooden eagle mask- with their prey spray-painted and fitted with exploding head collars.

The film runs at the one hour and twenty minutes mark, which largely passes by in an entertaining enough manner. Though it is a rather mixed affair- on the positive side, the hunters look neat with their avian masks, the guy running the whole thing is a decent blend of geek/ psycho, the more synth-based soundtrack elements create a nice tense atmosphere, and some of the kills/practical effects are passable. On the more negative side of things, neither of our female leads are great actors, we get a few too many off-screen kills/splatter CGI moments, and the so-called ‘humour’ fell largely flat for me.

As mentioned, this is a barebones DVD- with just a selection of trailers. And as this is a modern film, we get no new scan, and it looks good enough for a low-budget film.

A Game In The Woods is a passable enough effort. So if a low-budget mix of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Most Dangerous Game, and Hostel sounds like you’re thing, give this a go.