ROOTWOOD / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: MARCEL WALZ / SCREENPLAY: MARIO VON CZAPIEWSKI / STARRING: TYLER GALLANT, ELISSA DOWLING, SARAH FRENCH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Another trio of foolhardy youngsters take an ill-advised trip into the woods to uncover the truth behind an ancient curse, in California-set folk horror Rootwood. Hosts of the small-time podcast The Spooky Hour, William and Jessica, celebrate their big break when a Hollywood producer hires the pair to shoot a documentary on the mythology of ‘The Wooden Devil’.
The pair pack up their RV (motor home), pick up their airhead friend Erin (who has the hots for Will) and head out to begin their investigation. As the trio set up for their first night, it’s not difficult to tick off the list of films from which screenwriter Von Czapiewski has drawn inspiration. It’s a pretty derivative mash-up of the familiar, but it all supports what is a serviceable premise.
Stylistically, matters are complicated by the way that director Walz flips between different storytelling techniques. ‘Found footage’ and ‘point of view’ horror needs consistency if it is to draw in the viewer convincingly. But the way that Walz shifts the perspective between the ‘first-hand’ and the ‘observed’ feels careless and undermines narrative tension. Malibu Creek State Park provides a rugged, isolated setting, but its forests and valleys look stunning and sun-drenched on screen rather than foreboding. That juxtaposition between the beautiful and the threatening should underscore the mounting tension of a camping trip horror, but here the drone camera often just lingers on impressive scenery.
The night-time scenes of Rootwood are much more atmospheric and tense. As the characters make the requisite dumb decisions, the chase sequences through the pitch-black woods deliver the film’s most successful moments. Elissa Dowling puts in a spirited and committed performance as the increasingly terrified Jessica, whose plight is given extra impact by a surprisingly well-scored soundtrack.
Revelations tumble one after another in the finale, in a series of twists that are perhaps not quite so surprising as they are presented. But they do at least attempt to answer the film’s hanging questions.
Walz is an enthusiastic screen-horror aficionado. Rootwood is itself based on his 2012 German fright-flick Raw – The Curse of Grete Müller. The film-shoot-within-a-film dynamic of Rootwood allows him to include some knowing references to the filmmakers’ craft and the realities of no-budget movie making. But this is not a particularly notable example of the genre and at risk of finding itself rootless in the fertile but overcrowded field of horror VOD.
