Unconventional films are often of lower budget and lower production value. But what these films lack in quality, they gain in creativity. A prime example is A Stranger In The Woods directed by Jozef Gallai, and in this film, he employs an array of horror films cliches but combines them with unique elements that he uses to tell the story.
One of the characters, Edith (Laura Ellen Wilson) is a college student in her final year and has to work on her final project. This involves someone with an intriguing life so she needs to interview them. The teacher provides her the contact details of a Victor Browning (Bill Oberest Jr) who lives alone in the woods next to a lake. Before she arrives at his house, he is not who she hoped he would be. He is a rather unordinary and somewhat quirky character.
As I already said, the writer/director employs some interesting styles and tools to tell this story. One of them is night vision, which is used when the main character is blundering about in the dark looking for a stranger who she saw standing outside the house. Another style that he uses is the use of phone calls and video calls to relay information to the audience. The best of them all in a stroke of genius, however, is the police dispatch call with the dispatcher speaking to several police officers.
The man living in the house is quite a peculiar person. First, he jokes about not being who he is, and then he proceeds to eat breakfast in an odd fashion one morning. He begins throwing the dishes down and shattering the plate. Food prepared by his guest did not sit well with him. Looks like she was not privy to his specific palette. These specific instances have revealed to the main character the strange situation she finds herself in.
A Stranger In The Woods makes me think about films such as The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and Skinamarink. For some reason, it has the particular vibes of those iconic movies. The budget could not have been too high, which means a lot of creativity had to come from and go behind the camera. Gallai casted unknown people which did not distract from his styles of filmmaking, which was good.
To complete the finished product, this movie has a touch of documentary filmmaking. The style of docudrama enables the audience to understand the characters on a deeper level than the movie has shown till then. The two characters’ accounts were rather interesting and inspired me as to how this story is going to unfold. I will try to refrain from giving away any details but all the little bits are there for the audience to figure out themselves. This is a typical tale of a creature of the night but does so with an experimental twist through a docudrama approach.
A Stranger in the Woods blends a few styles to captivatingly tell the story of the woman subject of the documentary. Video calls, a police dispatch phone call, and even night vision are all elements added to this experimental film. The cast, who are not familiar to the American audiences, did an excellent job setting an overall dark and gloomy atmosphere. Overall, in my opinion, this movie was actually quite good given the challenges Gallai faced while filming. I trust the audience will feel as intrigued as I did.
To watch more movies visit Fmovies
Also Watch for more movies like:
