Red Woods Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Red Woods Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 20, 2021

Horror fans may have a new sub subgenre on their (bloody?) hands. Along with various other nooks and crannies that are regularly gathered under the general "horror" heading, there have been slasher films, slasher's Italian cousin gialli, monster movies, psychological thrillers and, in the wake of The Blair Witch Project, so-called "found footage" offerings, just to name a few. Now, Red Woods is indeed a found footage offering, albeit with something of a twist (discussed in more detail below), but it is now also the second film I've reviewed recently which deals with hikers in the Appalachians who stumble upon some unexpected "natives", which evidently may be the "next big thing" in horror plotting (this is obviously said in jest, lest that not be clear). Wrong Turn offered a gaggle of twenty somethings out for a hike in the forested hills of the Appalachians who (of course) meet up with mayhem and murder. Red Woods once again features the Appalachians, this time the Pennsylvania "branch" of the mountain range, and, again, a gaggle of twenty somethings finds themselves in desperate circumstances on what was supposed to be a hike built around documenting abandoned houses in the region. Wrong Turn was a "traditional" narrative film, whereas Red Woods is, as stated above, a found footage film, though it might be more accurate to call it "found footages", since one of Red Woods' more interesting conceits is there are a whole bunch of different people filming (or "capturing", as is humorously mentioned in some opening comments) the events. As writer-director Nick Danko disclosed in some emails to yours truly, that gave Danko the opportunity to exploit various points of view by actually using different cameras with different resolutions in order to help "identify" who was doing the shooting. As Danko states, "[the] whole idea was to have each person's POV (resolution/contrast/color) become their 'signature' so the audience would know who was behind camera at any given time."

It may actually not be quite clear that Red Woods is going to exploit the found footage style from the opening moments, with a more traditional narrative film presentation of a spooky looking far off house in the Appalachian woods. Only when an offscreen voice mentions "zooming in" on the house and a character suddenly appears on the right side of the frame, addressing the camera directly, does it become apparent that events are being documented by the participants in (or, in the case of the voice, behind) the frame. Soon enough it becomes clear that a whole coterie of would be filmmakers (and/or capturers, as the case may be) are shooting stuff, in what might be called the horror analog of the "infinity mirror" outing Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Two Takes by William Greaves. There's a disjunctive moment quite early in the proceedings where that opening establishing vista is almost "interrupted" by a jump forward that suggests that things have gone very, very wrong for the intrepid abandoned house explorers.

Much as with Wrong Turn, Red Woods attempts to provide a cross section of "types" inhabiting the story, though in this case they're arguably not as "trendy" as in the other Appalachian set horror outing, unless you consider a kind of "empath" character "trendy". That character is the alternately named Jack and/or Jax (Jacquelynn Ware), a woman who "senses" or "feels" things that others can't (and a character who is evidently based on Danko's wife Elizabeth, as is revealed in one of the supplements offered on this disc as bonus content). That allows Jack to opine about "spirits" and the like before more concrete (in more ways than one) elements like tombstones enter the fray.

Unfortunately, even someone with Jack's "particular set of skills" isn't able to initially figure out that there's a different kind of trouble brewing in the woods, unless, of course, she's behind the trouble and is merely putting on a show for the others. And in fact part of the conceit of Red Woods is the incipient paranoia that begins spreading among the hikers once things begin to go off the rails. That fear is exacerbated by the fact that the group is by and large strangers to each other, and also by the fact that various notions tied to conspiracy theories allow characters to become prone to postulating all sorts of nefarious reasons for "bad things happening to good people".

There are both pluses and minuses to Red Woods, with the most obvious positives being good use of locations, the multi-camera conceit, and the actually kind of "refreshing" (if that's the right word) decision not to introduce actual supernatural phenomena into the story, even if some of the characters seem to believe that there are such phenomena, at least for a little while, anyway. Probably the most noticeable negative is a tendency on the actors to be too over the top a lot of the time, something that's evident even in the opening few seconds, where some of the performers seem all too aware that they're on screen, which may be a product of the "found footage" aspect, but which also tends to be a distancing factor at times, rather than helping to make the action extremely "up close and personal".

Red Woods Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Red Woods is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Freestyle Digital Media with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. As mentioned above, one of the kind of interesting things about this "found footage" enterprise is that it intentionally exploits a host of different cameras various participants are using, some of which have markedly different presentational styles, not to mention actual source resolutions. Nick Danko kindly provided the following breakdown of the various cameras utilized and how they are "linked" to various characters, for those who are interested in this aspect:

• Sony DCR-VX2100 ; SD 480i (Raven)


• Sony HDR-AX2000 ; HD 1080p (Adam)


• Canon EOS C100 ; HD 1080p (Dutch)


• Arri Alexa Mini ; 3.6K uncompressed (Adam situational and VFX)


• Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro ; 4K uncompressed (Madhouse)


• DJI Inspire 2 Aerial Drone ; 4K uncompressed (Ensa)


• GoPro Hero 6 ; 4K compressed (Flynn)

As should probably be evident by the above list, there's an undeniably heterogeneous quality to the imagery in the film, with some sequences looking nicely sharp and well detailed and others intentionally "low res", fuzzy and considerably less precise. For a micro-budgeted feature, though, a lot of the visuals are rather evocative, including some really gorgeous vistas of the Appalachians that offer a nicely suffused palette and commendable fine detail levels. Some of the darker interior scenes as well as some of the 480 material can look noisy and littered with things like macroblocking and crush, but due to the structural conceit of different cameras offering different perspectives, what might seem like an issue becomes part of a stylistic choice.

The review disc I was sent was a BD-R, and it's my assumption that retail copies will be the same.

Red Woods Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Long time readers of my reviews know that I'm something of an audiophile, and one of the calling cards of the Blu-ray era for me personally was lossless audio, and so I tend to chafe at bit at Blu-ray releases that only offer lossy audio options. While the back cover of this release states that both a Dolby Digital 5.1 and a Dolby Digital 2.0 track are included, I was only able to access the Dolby Digital 5.1 track. While my score above reflects my displeasure at not having lossless audio, the surround track is quite immersive, especially considering the tiny budget the film had. With so much of the film taking place out of doors, there are consistent ambient environmental effects, and occasional moments of LFE, as in the rumbles of thunder that help open the film on an ominous, foreboding note. While there are typical "found footage" overlaps in dialogue, for the most part things are rendered cleanly and clearly. Optional English subtitles are available.

Red Woods Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• An Evil House Rises (HD; 10;16) is a fun piece documenting Danko actually building the "abandoned house" that is a focal element of the story.


• Blooper Reel (HD; 2:16)


• Hearing the Spirits (HD; 8:11) profiles Danko's wife Elizabeth, who was the inspiration for the character of Jack.


• Inventing the Stolen Footage Film (HD; 1:06:32) is a nice in depth piece that has a lot of production footage while attempting to make the case that maybe this is a sub sub subgenre.


• Trailer (HD; 2:28)

Red Woods Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The structural conceit of Red Woods lends this film a certain distinctive flavor that arguably separates it from the bulk of the now probably overused found footage approach. The film is decently spooky, if some of the scares and even basic plot points can seem derivative, but the performances can be a bit scattershot at times, leading to a diminution in perceived anxiety. This will most likely be an interesting feature nonetheless for those who like to examine production methods like the use of so many different cameras (and resolutions) to help define character(s). Technical merits are fine (video) if improvable (audio), and the supplemental package quite well done, for those who are considering a purchase.