The Retreat

Renee (Tommie-Amber Pirie) and her girlfriend Valerie (Sarah Allen) are going on a retreat to a cabin in the woods. At the local store, Val gets hit on by James (Aaron Ashmore). There are suspicious happenings. Their car is gone. Their hosts are a couple of gay guys and they've been murdered by a masked man dressed in camo hunting gear. This is a simple horror film. The gay targeting is somewhat interesting but the movie doesn't fully exploit it. I would have Renee try harder with the bear trap. The movie should spend more time with that scene to build up tension. It just struggles to build high tension. The actors are fine and there are some good ones here. The filmmaking is perfunctory. It's trying to be torture * but It's not good enough. I don't think the director is a horror aficionado and it shows.

Like the movie's runtime (and my patience for it), I'm going to keep this review short. Initial suspense? It's what earned the meager extra star of this review. Acting? Eh. Everything else? HORRIBLE. Poor lighting makes most of the second half difficult to watch, not that you'll miss much. Very little makes sense. There was so much potential...

If you have to depend on constant darkness to make a horror movie, it means the plot isn't good enough to carry it. I'm just about 40 minutes into the movie. Can't see a thing.

I don't know a thing about lighting but I do know that when I'm looking at black screen during many scenes, something is wrong. Lighting or not, there is not much to this movie. And emphasizing "lesbian" couple is odd. Straight couple or lesbian couple....the movie would the exact same.

Weak script, unlikable, uninteresting characters, poor cinematography, and amateur acting make this picture a complete waste of the viewers time.... I wanted to like this movie, I really did, but couldn't find a single reason to give it anything more then one star. There was nothing that kept my attention. As hard as I tried to watch everything else kept pulling my focus away from the movie. I actually wound up vacuuming while glancing at the TV for a particular scream or noise. This is just a poorly made movie rushed to the marketplace because it has... LESBIANS!!! I find this very condescending.