Lake Fear (2014)

Four girls plan to stay in an old cabin in the woods, which turns out to actually be at the edge of a field. They have no idea who owns the place or if someone lives there. They’re not even exactly sure how to get there, which leads to our teens hiking through the woods to get to the mystery cabin. It’s not clear why they’re going there or how they found out where it was, but it sounds like a bad idea over all.

Tina is a mean girl with a bad attitude who you hope dies first.  When one of the girls says they may get in trouble if the owner of the house show up, Tina scoffs and says they’ll pretend they’re lost and needed help so they went in.  None of them are very bright since there is a light on outside the cabin and its fairly clean inside. So someone is keeping this place up. But they go in and make themselves at home.

Soon evil spirits are unleashed, a large man shows up, and the film uses tons of horror movies tropes, which they probably thought were scary, but combining them just makes the film super annoying.  There is a lot of dissonant noise, voices with echo or devil effects which make them unintelligible, and a couple sections of complete cacophony where a soul singer and horror movie music play at the same time. It’s all annoying, rather than scary.

Not only are the characters unlikeable, but they make terrible decisions.  One is lying in mud on her stomach and her arms are pulled into the ground. But once she frees herself, she continues to lie there and look at her arms as if perplexed.   Yup it would be confusing but also creepy as hell so why would you continue to lie there? At a minimum, please move back three feet.

This had tons of padding. There are slow motion scenes of them driving in the car and an inexplicable time lapse of an industrial building while the girls walk into the woods.  What is the building? Why are we seeing it? I have no idea.  You’d be better served by watching the Evil Dead.  At least you want those characters to escape. These girls are so annoying and entitled that you just think, well they got what they deserved since they decided to take over someone else’s house.

I was stunned when I saw on IMDB that this a horror comedy. The synopsis provided by the filmmaker says it’s a generic spoof premise. What was supposed to be funny? Where was the over exaggeration for comedic effect?  A lot of low budget movies have painfully unfunny dialogue which you can assume is supposed to be funny, even though it’s not.  That this was supposed to have comedy makes the movie all the more disappointing. It wasn’t interesting, funny or enjoyable. Surprisingly there are two sequels.

Who is he and why does he show up out of nowhere?

Tina’s usual expression because she thinks everyone is an idiot