This is a slasher movie, fairly standard “undead guy in the woods kills teenagers at a cabin”, but the camera mostly follows the killer instead of the victims. There’s no soundtrack or creepy music at all, and there are long shots of the killer, almost always from behind, walking through the woods. The result is very creepy and really made me feel like I was there watching these events rather than a scripted film. The “gimmick” ends up working really well.
The kills are even pretty cheesy mostly, as you would expect from a Friday the 13th analogue, but because of the way they’re framed they stand out as flashes of disturbing violence rather than fun cheesy slasher kills.
Overall, there’s a disturbing nature to the whole movie that subverts the subject matter by including the real world. Like a nightmare that feels terrifyingly real, but sounds ridiculous when you describe it in the morning.
I’m docking a skull because there are a few times that the long shots went way too long. Even understanding that the long silent shots are what make the violence so refined, there’s a point where my interest shifted away because nothing was happening.
4 out of 5