"Without any doubt the best british horrormovie in years" screams a quote from a print-publication from the backcover and that I still don´t know which magazine works in such bad taste, doesn´t help a lot in building up anticipation for the movie. So at first, I had to compare "Forest of the damned" to other (then) recent scary stuff from the island. Let alone think of "28 days later" from "Trainspotting"s and the oscarflooded "Slumdog Millionaire" Danny Boyle or the lesser known cult-shockers "Dog Soldiers" or "Descent" by Neil Marshall. Even real target-audience stuff like the black humored zombie-movie "Dead Meat" let the above quote at least stay tough to fulfill.

"Forest of the damned" takes place in a forest (of course) wich is haunted by sirenes - strangely in the german dubbed version these are fallen angels - which seduce tourists to eat them after the act. Five backpackers now have problems with their van right in this part of the forest and anyone who can´t imagine the rest of the story right from this point on probably has never seen any Friday the 13th-movie.

On the plus-side theres at least the point that the killing/maneating/menacing angels/sirenes haunt the autumn forest just the way god has created them. Sadly their heads and faces aren´t of the same quality as their bodys, but you can´t have everything in a low-budget chiller. If it´s enough for you to see naked girls running around in the forest, this disc is a sure buy and you can save your time now and skip the rest of this review. If you´re fan of stageblood you´re also in for some wet pleasures, even if either Make-Up nor technical quality can keep up with better genre-productions. The undisputet highlight here is a hommage to George A. Romeros "Day of the Dead" in wich one guy gets ripped in two by a group of naked woman. Sadly right there one could easily see who´s the master and who´s the apprentice.

At least you can´t say director and screenwriter Johannes Roberts doesn´t try hard enough. From time to time he finds some nice shots and some of the characters seem almost real. And when he tries something new and unusual he really shows some talent. Sadly enough he doesn´t do this often enough and so the viewer is treated with a hotchpotch of clichés and a collection of scenes we all have seen really often and mostly in much better movies. Of course it can be haunting and interesting to film a chase-scene "Blair witch"-wise with shaky-cam and flashlight-illumination only, but doing this for more than three minutes and - closer to the finale - more often than not, it becomes tiresome. And whoever still gets scared by a shadow swooping through the picture after all these japanese ghostmovies and their american remakes, should better watch some generic romantic comedy next.

Another problem is the sound. As soon as any of the sirenes/angels enters the frame the music hammers in heartbeatrhythm and in addition there are animal screams and strange noises on the soundtrack. Of course all this is mixed in much louder than the rest of the soundtrack - you still have to scare the audience. Wishful thinking, because in reality all this noise simply distracts the viewer from the movie instead of drawing him in.

Starring in this trainwreck are Shaun Hutson and Tom Savini - at least this is what the cover promises. The ex-goremaster proves again that his acting ability is limited to a saucer-eyed stare and twisting of his beard. This time he also adds a very wet way to speak to this and so the viewer is really glad, when he finally meets his maker just five minutes into the movie with the help of a pump-action gun.

Shaun Hutson is better known as writer of such bloody and disgusting (and really great) novels like "Slugs" or "Exit Wounds". His starring role is reduced to a three minute appearance behind the wheel of his car. The most interesting part in this is that a paperback of "Slugs" is laying beside him the whole time - his acting abilitys are low enough to have time to notice such details.

The german DVD seems a bit on the dark side, but at least has some extras. You find three deleted scenes, one of them really funny and a so named making of-video. But just don´t expect Shaun Hutson or Tom Savini here, what you get is tits and tits and a few tits. Instead of giving us a glimpse of the production of this movie - wich probably would have made it more worthwhile - you get 15 minutes of casting videos with barebreasted girls seducing the camera. No comment - who needs such stuff will be glad to find it here.

So all in all we have here another generic and insteadly forgetable cheap splattermovie. Just the stuff to let run along a party without the sound. For me it´s another nail in Tom Savinis coffin.

- Reviewed by Dia