{"id":33824,"date":"2020-10-01T01:21:34","date_gmt":"2020-10-01T05:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=33824"},"modified":"2020-10-01T00:06:28","modified_gmt":"2020-10-01T04:06:28","slug":"murder-in-the-woods-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/01\/murder-in-the-woods-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Murder in the Woods (2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I love the fact that with the accessibility of filmmaking with modern technology, that more filmmakers are trying to give us different perspectives. With \u201cMurder in the Woods\u201d it\u2019s one in many efforts to give us the classic genre horror fixes with different kinds of characters. This time around the Latinx characters aren\u2019t tokens, but the actual protagonists fighting against the film\u2019s villain.<\/p>\n

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A group of college friends plan a getaway to celebrate a birthday party at a desolate cabin in the woods. Against his grandmother\u2019s (Soledad St. Hilaire) demands, introvert Jesse (Jos\u00e9 Juli\u00e1n) decides to go on a trip with his friends. He is immediately smitten with Fernanda (Jeanette Samano), a sweet girl from Chicago whom he hasn\u2019t seen in years. She is in town visiting her loudmouth cousin, Chelsea (Chelsea Rendon), who is ready to celebrate her birthday and plans to let loose with her boyfriend Gabe (Jordan Diambrini). Tagging along at the last second are friends Jule (Kade Wise), and the beautiful Celeste (Catherine Toribio). Soon after arriving to the mysterious cabin in the woods, the group of teens discovers the dark secret it holds, which forces them to fight for their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cMurder in the Woods\u201d doesn\u2019t exactly re-invent the wheel, but director Luis Iga Garza\u2019s horror film sets out to give us less stock slasher characters and more unique Latinx heroes that we can get behind. And he pulls off creating characters of substance and fascinating back stories, while also shying away from cultural stereotypes. It\u2019s a fine line to walk creating an all Latinx cast while pulling back from heavy cultural stereotypes, and Iga Garza pulls it off well. I was very much invested in the narrative and effective cast of characters that writer Yelyna De Le\u00f3n built on-screen, and I especially enjoyed the walk on by the iconic Danny Trejo. \u201cMurder in the Woods\u201d succeeds as a very good and often tense slasher film that unabashedly embraces the classic slasher set up.<\/p>\n

Director Iga Garza obviously knows how to make a great slasher film, and despite its small budget, \u201cMurder in the Woods\u201d doesn\u2019t hold back with some very good kill scenes and decent grue here and there. Like most slashers, \u201cMurder in the Woods\u201d relies on a lot of exposition to build up to the big explosion. Thankfully it mostly pays off with a pretty great finale that reminded me a lot of \u201cHappy Birthday to Me.\u201d That said, \u201cMurder in the Woods\u201d could stand tighter editing, and I\u2019m still not sure what the final scene indicated, if anything. It felt like a sloppy open ended climax for the sake of a sequel (?), or just a sloppy final edit. Thankfully it doesn\u2019t hinder what is an otherwise very good and atmospheric slasher film. I hope more Latinx filmmakers step up to deliver great horror fare with more representation.<\/p>\n

Now available for in-home viewing on various Digital and Video on Demand platforms.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love the fact that with the accessibility of filmmaking with modern technology, that more filmmakers are trying to give us different perspectives. With \u201cMurder in the Woods\u201d it\u2019s one in many efforts to give us the classic genre horror fixes with different kinds of characters. This time around the Latinx characters aren\u2019t tokens, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7,12],"tags":[441,477,501,703,950,1033],"class_list":["post-33824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-indie","category-halloween-horror-month","category-movie-reviews","tag-halloween","tag-horror","tag-indie-film","tag-mystery","tag-slasher","tag-teen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33826,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33824\/revisions\/33826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}