Once again it’s time to take a wrong turn into uncharted territories. At least uncharted by the characters in these movies. We’ve been there before…but which flick held its own for me? Let’s find out.
FURRY NIGHTS (2016)
Furry fetishists rejoice! You finally get your own backwoods slasher! The down side? You’re totally painted as the psychos.
This fuzzy wuzzy flick starts with a bit of a Race With the Devil vibe. A group of friends is out in the woods. One guy witnesses a bunch of furries dancing around a fire and films it. They hear him and he runs away.
But that night, a furry comes to their camp…and things don’t end well. Now the rest of the furry cult is out for revenge!
This film’s tone is surprisingly mostly serious, the furries are menacing, and the kills are violent and brutal although there’s no explicit gore. And the forest setting is perfectly lighted to feel naturally dark, with plenty of bouncing flashlight beams as the chase kicks into high gear.
Of course you can’t make a movie about killer furries without some campy humor. It all lands on the shoulders of the main guy in this movie. His reactions to everything he goes through are classic. I’m shocked that the entire cast is left to play the “straight man” while he gets to steal the show.
By the time he dons a furry costume himself, speaks in squeaky cute furry voice, and gets in a fight with one of the bad furries, I was laughing out loud.
His performance alone would be reason enough for me to add this movie to my DVD collection.
WHAT THE WATERS LEFT BEHIND (2017)
I think I have backwoods/wilderness/cannibal family/torture horror movie burnout. While this film is sleek and technically right on target, I just wasn’t blown away by it, wasn’t scared or on the edge of my seat, and actually started to get bored during the most gruesome torture scenes. But if you love this subgenre or have never seen movies like Wolf Creek, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Frontier(s), The Hills Have Eyes…I could go on all day with this list…you may just find this one a winner.
It’s also hard to ignore the fact that although this is a Spanish language film, it follows the template of every American horror movie ever made in this genre.
-friends driving in van to location of tragic incident.
-one of the girls was a child and lived through the tragedy.
-they make a pit stop and the people running the place are creepy.
-girl goes to the restroom and the bowl is a disgusting mess…yet she still uses it. Why do people always use overflowing shit bowls in these movies when the miles of wilderness right outside is nature’s bathroom?
-there are clippings of missing people.
-girl does a sexy dance for a guy in the middle of nowhere then they have sex.
-their van breaks down.
-someone goes for help.
-someone suffers a wound and becomes a huge burden on the others.
-they all get chased, killed, and abducted by masked crazies.
-there’s a bear trap. There simply has to be a bear trap.
-the survivors are raped and tortured in a lair.
-the family grinds the dead into meat.
-the family feeds the dead meat to the living during a macabre dinner party.
Even the big surprise twist isn’t so unusual. The one thing that actually makes this film timely to an American audience is that it’s kind of a cautionary tale about why Dump should think twice about continuously not sending relief and rescue to areas devastated by natural disasters.
