The Woods (2006 film)

Last updated
The Woods
TheWoodsPoster.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Lucky McKee
Written by David Ross
Produced by
  • Bryan Furst
  • Sean Furst
Starring
Cinematography John R. Leonetti
Edited by
Music by John Frizzell
Production
companies
Distributed by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment [2]
Release date
Running time
91 minutes [4]
CountryUnited States [1]
Language English

The Woods is a 2006 American supernatural horror film directed by Lucky McKee and starring Agnes Bruckner, Patricia Clarkson, Rachel Nichols, Lauren Birkell and Bruce Campbell. Set in 1965, its plot concerns a wayward teenage girl who is sent to a New England all-girls private high school which holds an ominous secret related to the staff, history and woods surrounding the school.

Contents

Plot

In 1965, after burning down a tree in her yard, rebel teenager Heather Fasulo is sent to the boarding school Falburn Academy in the middle of the woods by her estranged mother Alice Fasulo and negligent father Joe Fasulo. The headmistress, Ms. Traverse, accepts Heather in spite of her father's bad financial condition. The displaced Heather becomes close friends with Marcy Turner, while they are maltreated by their abusive classmate Samantha Wise. During the night, Heather has a nightmare of a student named Ann, covered in blood, and hears voices that seem to be coming from the woods. The next day, Marcy tells Heather that Ann was taken to a mental institution after attempting to commit suicide, and that she'd been covered in blood.

With the help of Marcy, Heather eventually learns to adjust to her new school, even having fun at times. Ms. Traverse subjects Heather to special tests to see if she is "gifted", telling her that it is all part of her scholarship to the academy. The girls tell Heather a spooky story about the history of Falburn, which includes three young redheaded sisters who arrived at the school and turned out to be witches, killing the headmistress before leaving to the woods. Meanwhile, Samantha continues to torment Heather, who comes to despise her and fights back. Ann returns from the mental institution, and Heather finds her one day, rocking in her bed. Ann reveals that she is afraid she will be taken by the witches. She says she is cold, so Heather climbs on a trunk to try and close the open window over Ann's bed. A low fog rushes into the room and knocks Heather down, twisting her ankle, and she is taken to the infirmary. The next day, Heather finds Ann's bed empty, her place filled with dead leaves. She witnesses the headmistress lying to the police about Ann's disappearance, remarking that she is being taken care of.

This leads her to become suspicious and she tries to talk to Marcy about it. But Marcy acts strangely, and is shadowed by one of the teachers. Soon after, Heather finds Marcy's bed empty and covered in leaves. Later, she is confronted in the woods by Samantha, who reveals that she has actually been trying to protect Heather with her antics. She tells Heather that the school is led by a coven of witches who want to take all of the girls away. Samantha explains that she has called Heather's father to help her escape and that the milk is poisoned. The girls are both caught by a school mistress, who promptly takes Samantha away. Samantha is later found hanging from a bedsheet in the cafeteria. When a police officer comes to investigate, Heather tells him of the missing students. The officer confronts the headmistress, but she claims that the girls ran away. Another mistress "leads" the officer into the woods to find the girls, where he is killed by the living vines of a tree.

Heather's parents show up to take her home, though the headmistress tries to persuade them otherwise. On the way home, their car is mysteriously flipped and Heather is knocked unconscious. Alice is dragged out of the car by a living vine and kicks Joe in the head, knocking him out. Heather and Joe wake up in a nearby hospital. Before they can reach each other, Ms. Traverse has Heather dragged away, then slits her own hand and forces her black blood down Joe's throat, which puts him into a catatonic state. Heather returns to the school in despair. She drinks the milk that evening, but later vomits it back up, finding tree bark in it. Back at the hospital, Joe wakes up and vomits up Ms. Traverse's black blood, which also has tree bark in it. He quickly escapes and goes to find Heather. That night, Heather begins to hear voices again, and when she attempts to leave, a living vine captures her.

When she awakens, she is wrapped in vines in a large foggy room, next to Ann and Marcy, who are also held captive. All of the teachers appear and reveal themselves to be witches. Ms. Traverse is their leader, and she explains that their spirits have been trapped in the woods all these years, and they need to inhabit the bodies of young women to escape their imprisonment. Heather appears to be the centerpiece of her plan because she has the strongest powers among the gifted students. Heather is coerced into completing the ritual, and the vines begin to mummify all of the girls in the school. Before it can complete itself, Joe breaks into the room with an ax and begins to kill the witches. Heather breaks free from the vines and grabs the ax, proceeding to chop all of the witches into pieces. Heather and Joe then leave with all of the girls, walking down the road into the daylight as the school burns in the distance behind them.

The end of the movie states that Falburn Academy burned to the ground in 1965, while the surrounding woods were strangely left untouched.

Cast

Production

The Woods was shot in 2004 [2] at Mels Cité du Cinema in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. [5]

Release

The Woods had its North American premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal in 2006. [6] The film's distributor, United Artists, planned for a theatrical release, but it was shelved after Sony Pictures bought out United Artists' parent company, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in 2004. [7] [8] Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the film direct-to-DVD in the United States on October 3, 2006 [9] following festival screenings. [2]

Critical response

Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 69% of 15 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 6.10/10. [4]

Brian Holcomb of the independent film review website Beyond Hollywood wrote: "The Woods plays like a classic Lewton film of the 1940s, where the emphasis was on telling a good yarn without much ado and wrapping it up in a tightly wound 70 minutes." [10] Film journalist Nick Schager noted that the film "proves to be one of the most polished and inventive horror flicks of the still-ongoing year, a synthesis of classical supernatural and sexualized imagery that expands upon, rather than simply regurgitates, its celebrated predecessors," and compared it to Suspiria (1977) and Carrie (1976). [11] DVD Talk 's Scott Weinberg praised the film's performances as "uniformly excellent" and also praised the cinematography and musical score. [12]

Related Research Articles

<i>Heathers</i> 1989 American comedy film by Michael Lehmann

Heathers is a 1988 American teen black comedy film written by Daniel Waters and directed by Michael Lehmann, in both of their respective film debuts. The film stars Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty, Lisanne Falk, Kim Walker, and Penelope Milford. Its plot portrays four teenage girls—three of whom are named Heather—in a clique at an Ohio high school, one of whose lives is disrupted by the arrival of a misanthrope intent on murdering the popular students and staging their deaths as suicides.

<i>The Craft</i> (film) 1996 film by Andrew Fleming

The Craft is a 1996 American teen supernatural horror film directed by Andrew Fleming from a screenplay by Peter Filardi and Fleming and a story by Filardi. The film stars Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell, and Rachel True. It follows four outcast teenage girls at a Los Angeles parochial high school who pursue witchcraft for their own gain and subsequently experience negative repercussions.

<i>Cabin Fever</i> (2002 film) 2002 film by Eli Roth

Cabin Fever is a 2002 American horror comedy film co-written and directed by Eli Roth and starring Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd, James DeBello, Cerina Vincent, Joey Kern, and Giuseppe Andrews. The story follows a group of college graduates who rent a cabin in the woods and begin to fall victim to a flesh-eating virus. The inspiration for the film's story came from a real-life experience during a trip to Iceland when Roth developed a skin infection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rei Hance</span> American actress, writer (b. 1974)

Rei Hance is an American writer, businesswoman, and retired actress. She is best known for her role in the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project, and as Mary Crawford in the miniseries Taken. Hance was credited under her birth name in her acting roles and for her first book before legally changing her name to Rei Hance in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angela Bettis</span> American actress

Angela Marie Bettis is an American actress, film producer, and director. Following her breakthrough role as Janet Webber in the drama film Girl, Interrupted (1999), she earned acclaim for her portrayals of Carrietta White in the television film Carrie (2002) and the titular character in the psychological horror film May (2002). For May, she won the Brussels International Festival Award for Best Actress, the Catalan International Film Festival Award for Best Actress and the Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Actress. She went on to play Belle Cleek in the horror film The Woman (2011) and Mandy in the black comedy film 12 Hour Shift (2020). For 12 Hour Shift, she earned a nomination for the Critics' Choice Award for Best Actress in a Horror Movie.

<i>Blonde Ambition</i> 2007 American film

Blonde Ambition is a 2007 American romantic comedy film directed by Scott Marshall and starring Jessica Simpson as a small-town girl who moves to New York City and rises up into a career as a business woman. The film also stars Luke Wilson, Rachael Leigh Cook, Penelope Ann Miller, Andy Dick, Drew Fuller, Larry Miller and Willie Nelson.

<i>Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings</i> 1994 American film

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings is an American supernatural horror film and a sequel to the 1988 horror film Pumpkinhead. In this film, thrill-seeking teens resurrect a demon and come to regret it. The film is very loosely connected to others in the series. The PC video game Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge was released shortly after the film.

<i>Teen Witch</i> 1989 teen fantasy-comedy film

Teen Witch is a 1989 American teen fantasy comedy film directed by Dorian Walker, written by Robin Menken and Vernon Zimmerman, and starring Robyn Lively and Zelda Rubinstein. The plot follows Louise, a teenage girl who discovers she's a witch and gains powers on her 16th birthday.

<i>American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile</i> 2006 film by Joe Nussbaum

American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile is a 2006 American sex comedy film released by Universal Pictures. It is the second installment in the American Pie Presents film series, a spin-off of the American Pie franchise. John White stars as Erik Stifler, a high school senior given a hall pass from his girlfriend who visits his cousin to run a mile naked. Christopher McDonald co-stars as Erik's father and Eugene Levy plays family friend Noah Levenstein.

<i>Private School</i> (film) 1983 film by Noel Black

Private School is a 1983 American teen sex comedy film, directed by Noel Black. Starring Phoebe Cates, Betsy Russell, and Matthew Modine, it follows a teenaged couple attempting to have sex for the first time, while their friends engage in sexually minded practical jokes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walford Anglican School for Girls</span> Independent, single-sex, day & boarding school in Hyde Park, South Australia, Australia

Walford Anglican School for Girls is an independent, Anglican, day and boarding school for girls, located in Hyde Park, South Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susannah Martin</span> Woman executed for witchcraft in Salem, 1692

Susannah Martin was one of fourteen women executed for the suspicion of practicing witchcraft during the Salem witch trials of colonial Massachusetts.

<i>Legally Blondes</i> 2009 film by Savage Steve Holland

Legally Blondes is a 2009 American direct-to-DVD teen comedy film directed by Savage Steve Holland. Filmed as a pilot to a cancelled television series, it is a spin-off of the Legally Blonde film series. Reese Witherspoon, who played Elle Woods in the first two Legally Blonde films, serves as a producer. The film stars Milly and Becky Rosso as Elle's British twin cousins.

<i>Rock of Love with Bret Michaels</i> American reality television dating game show

Rock of Love with Bret Michaels is an American reality television dating game show. It stars Bret Michaels, the lead singer from the band Poison. The show closely resembles the show Flavor of Love. The first season featured 25 women competing to be Michaels' girlfriend. Each week, the women face challenges, the winner of which gets to go on a date with Michaels. Some of the challenges were based on situations that they might encounter if chosen to be Michaels' girlfriend. The first season winner was 24-year-old Jes Rickleff from Naperville, Illinois. At the reunion, she revealed that she did not have romantic feelings for Michaels, and that she thought that he should have chosen the runner-up, Heather.

<i>The Blair Witch Project</i> 1999 horror film by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez

The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American supernatural horror film written, directed and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. It is a fictional story of three student filmmakers—Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard—who hike into the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland, in 1994 to film a documentary about a local myth known as the Blair Witch. The three disappear, but their equipment and footage are discovered a year later. The purportedly "found footage" is the movie the viewer sees.

<i>Cinderella</i> (1914 film) 1914 American film

Cinderella is a 1914 silent film starring Mary Pickford, directed by James Kirkwood Sr., produced by Daniel Frohman, and released by Famous Players Film Company. The film is based upon the fairy tale Cinderella. The film was released on Blu-ray & DVD as a bonus feature from the DVD of Through the Back Door (1921). It was previously released on DVD by Alpha Video.

<i>The Possessed</i> (1977 film) 1977 television film directed by Jerry Thorpe

The Possessed is a 1977 American supernatural horror television film directed by Jerry Thorpe and written by John Sacret Young. The film stars James Farentino as a former priest, now an exorcist, who battles Satanic forces that are threatening the students at a girls' high school. It also stars Claudette Nevins, Eugene Roche, Harrison Ford, Ann Dusenberry, Diana Scarwid, and Joan Hackett.

<i>Superstition</i> (1982 film) 1982 slasher film by James W. Roberson

Superstition is a 1982 American supernatural slasher film directed by James W. Roberson and starring James Houghton, Albert Salmi, and Lynn Carlin. The plot follows a family who move into a house that was once the site of a witch's execution. Though shot in 1981, Superstition was not released in US before 1985.

<i>The Worst Witch</i> (2017 TV series) Fantasy drama childrens television series

The Worst Witch is a fantasy drama children's television series. Based on novel series of the same name published in 1974 by Jill Murphy, the series follows Mildred Hubble and her friends Maud Spellbody and Enid Nightshade and rivals Ethel Hallow, Drusilla Paddock and Felicity Foxglove's adventures and education at Cackle's Academy under caring headmistress Miss Cackle and strict deputy headmistress Miss Hardbroom. It is the fifth adaptation of The Worst Witch series after the 1986 television film, the 1998 television series, the 2001 television spin-off and the 2005 television spin-off.

<i>Down a Dark Hall</i> (film) 2018 supernatural horror film

Down a Dark Hall is a 2018 supernatural horror film directed by Rodrigo Cortés and written by Chris Sparling and Michael Goldbach. It is based on the 1974 novel of the same name by Lois Duncan. Summit Entertainment released it in select theaters and through video-on-demand in the United States on August 17, 2018.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "The Woods (2004)". British Film Institute . Archived from the original on March 16, 2018. Retrieved March 16, 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 Moriarty (November 12, 2006). "Moriarty's DVD Blog! Lucky McKee's The Woods Review!". Ain't it Cool News . Retrieved January 23, 2018.
  3. ↑ Stevens, Caitlin (August 4, 2011). "Fantastic Fest Alums: Catching Up With The Class of 2006". Fantastic Fest. Retrieved September 7, 2018.
  4. 1 2 "The Woods (2006)". Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved March 16, 2018.
  5. ↑ Elsenthal, Bram (October 28, 2006). "Halloween: Perhaps a walk in The Woods, or a trip on Terror Train". The Gazette. Montreal, Quebec. p. i3 – via Newspapers.com. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  6. ↑ "The Woods". Fantasia Film Festival . Archived from the original on July 24, 2006. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
  7. ↑ Kackman, Michael; Binfield, Marnie; Payne, Matthew Thomas; Perlman, Allison; Sebok, Bryan, eds. (2010). Flow TV: Television in the Age of Media Convergence. New York: Routledge. p. 157. ISBN   978-1-135-85094-4.
  8. ↑ Dentler, Matt (September 27, 2006). "Fantastic Fest 2006: Lucky McKee x 2". IndieWire . Archived from the original on July 5, 2019.
  9. ↑ Murray, Steve (September 8, 2006). "A Super-size Hollywood Mystery". The Atlanta Constitution . Atlanta, Georgia. p. E2 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ↑ Holcomb, Brian (October 8, 2006). "The Woods (2006) Movie Review". Beyond Hollywood. Archived from the original on October 2, 2010. Retrieved August 29, 2018.
  11. ↑ Schager, Nick (October 19, 2006). "The Woods (2006)". Lessons of Darkness. Retrieved September 7, 2018.
  12. ↑ Weinberg, Scott (September 2, 2006). "The Woods: DVD Talk review". DVD Talk . Retrieved September 6, 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.