The Woods - Review

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This is a movie that lives and dies in the amazing Patricia Clarkson's capable hands. I kept being reminded of Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada - Clarkson took this sinister role of a possibly deranged school headmistress and played it as quietly as she could, until you can barely stand it. Is she evil incarnate? Or is she a sweet put-upon lady who is trying her hardest to be there for her charges? Clarkson has it both ways and every scene she's in is a study in cool tension. And director Lucky McKee's smart enough to put her in nearly every, or every other, scene.

I'm a fan of McKee's previous film, the undervalued May with Angela Bettis; he's got some kinks he's still working through and I do think he's got a great horror film in him Unfortunately The Woods is not it. It does have its moments of greatness, but they belong to Clarkson. Watching this made the probably-false rumors of her playing Mrs. Voorhees in a Friday the 13th reimagineering all the more bittersweet. Because, again like Streep in Prada, there is one moment here where Clarkson's facade of coolness is broken through and it's downright chilling, and then to imagine Clarkson becoming as completely unhinged as Mrs. Voorhess does, all the time with that deranged smile, well that's to imagine something truly scary.

McKee does have the important skill of crafting and displaying good roles for women in horror, though, as he's proven with Bettis in May and now Clarkson here, so I'm glad he's out there doing his thing. Why this film didn't get any real release I can sort of understand - it's a pretty old-fashioned brand of horror here; no excessive gore, just that sinking feeling that something is off. I was reminded at a couple of moments of Dario Argento's masterpiece Suspiria - specifically the early scenes where we arrive at the school in the rain and see the girl running through the woods that goes unexplained; specifically not the scenes where girls are thrown into pits of razor wire - but this film is nowhere near as great as that one.

The Woods does carve out it's own notch in the bedpost of "Girls Terrorized At Boarding School By The Supernatural" films, though, due mostly to Clarkson's diabolically subdued performance. I can't express how thankful I was for Clarkson in the final scenes which would've, in less assured hands, probably gone totally over the top, but in Patty's we are treated to nothing more than a terrifying blaze of whispers.

Oh, and anything that gives Bruce Campbell some work can't be bad. It's like a rule.

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