Movies That Suck: Forest Primeval (2008)

I already touched on this when I talked about Attack of the Killer Shrews!, but I think it bears repeating here: I would never attempt to discourage or demoralize people who shoot movies with little-to-no resources, in the areas around or near their homes, and on video, DV cameras, and whatnot. If you do that, or are inspired to do it, and you're doing it purely for fun rather than profit, or even if you're doing it for both, then I say go for it, and don't let anyone else tell you differently. But, that said, I don't enjoy watching these kinds of films. Call me a snob, but I almost never get any enjoyment out of watching stuff shot on low-rent equipment, with crappy acting by people who are either friends or relatives of the filmmakers, and homemade special effects, be they makeup and gore or digital effects that anybody can create on their laptop. Every once in a while, it does produce a truly enjoyable flick that shows off some inherent talent, like The Deadly Spawn or Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, but for the most part, these things come off like stuff the filmmakers should be showing to their inner-circles, rather than putting out there for the entire world to see. And that's another thing: if you put it out there, don't expect people, myself included, to go easy on it just because you made it with virtually no money. If I or anyone else think it's shitty, then we think it's shitty. Sorry if this comes off as defensive, but I'm saying this right off the bat because I know the Polonia Brothers have a cult following, both among amateur filmmakers and hardcore genre fans who enjoy watching the types of movies they made. I might still get some flack for hating on this regardless, but I want to stress that it's not out of spite towards them, other people who make stuff like this, or those who enjoy it; I legitimately found this excruciating to sit through, despite its just being 69 minutes long. 

And how did I end up seeing Forest Primeval, despite my aversion to stuff like this? Because the DVD was one of the many items that my late friend, Jeff Burr, left with me. I actually intended for much of the stuff he left behind to be reviewed this year, but a lot of it is so obscure and horrendous that I couldn't find any online rips to get screenshots from. So, this ended up being the only one that made it in this time around. I had no preconceived notions whatsoever when I first went into it, as I'd never heard of it and only vaguely knew who the Polonia Brothers were back then (it was only while doing some research that I became aware of exactly what films they'd made in the past that they're well known for). However, I could tell just by looking at the DVD case (as well as from the smell of it, as the cases for these types of films tend to have a very distinct one) that it was one of those no budget, amateur indie flicks and was probably shot on either video or DV, which was confirmed as soon as I started it up. I knew I was likely in trouble right then and there, and while I hoped that I may end up getting some entertainment out of it, if nothing else, it instead proved remarkably difficult to get through. Not only is the acting bad, the characters far below one-dimensional, and the effects laughable, but the movie is so damn boring, consisting mostly of long drawn out sequences of people just wandering around the woods before they finally get attacked or run off. It's so mind-numbing that I often found myself forgetting the context of a given scene, including who's actually in the woods at a time (and I was looking at the screen with both of my eyes open), or felt my eyelids getting heavy. That is not my idea of a movie that's so bad, it's good.

As his wife waits impatiently by their truck, a man named Jarvis is hunting near Skull Mountain in Pennsylvania, when the area is rocked by an earthquake. Once it subsides, he goes to investigate, only to be attacked by a demonic creature that beheads him with its enormous claws. The creature then makes its way over to the vehicle and kills Jarvis' wife as well. Some time later, a woman named Camille awakens in the Toledo High Clinic, where she's being examined following a series of bizarre events that have left her a murder suspect. Dr. Dawson, the man seeing to her, contacts the local sheriff, telling him that he's going to listen to her story, and will call him back when it's finished. Claiming that there's a demon from hell stalking her, and that she's somehow linked to it, Camille begins her story, which really began with two treasure hunters unrelated to her: Reggie and Lou. Having driven up to Skull Mountain in a camper to find a fortune in gold said to be buried up there, they quickly ran afoul of the demon, which took control of the camper and almost caused them to crash. Elsewhere, in a nearby town, Camille, who found herself saddled with psychic powers following an accident, was being tormented by horrific and physically painful visions of the demon. She called her boyfriend, Frank, who worked at a local TV station, but he decided that he couldn't take any more of this and broke things off with her. As Camille wrestled with her visions, writing them down, the demon killed again, brutalizing a hiker, which she also experienced, and which led to her unconsciously drawing an image of Skull Mountain. Meanwhile, Reggie and Lou found a spot to park and Reggie began searching the area on his own, using a metal detector. Though initially striking out, he eventually found an ancient knife that he figured might be worth something. That night, after seeing a vision of the demon murdering someone else, Camille decided to go to Skull Mountain and face it head-on. There, she would cross paths with Reggie and Lou, who would also become its targets.

Even though I'm not into the type of movies they made, I won't deny that Mark and John Polonia, who got started in the mid-80's, did have quite a prolific output, with their first notable release being 1987's Splatter Farm, after which they continued steadily through the 90's and into the 2000's, with stuff like Lethal Nightmare, Saurians, Hellspawn, the two Feeders movies (the first of which was shockingly successful, becoming Blockbuster's most rented independent film of 1996), The House That Screamed, Dweller, and Splatter Beach, among many others. Forest Primeval actually ended up being the penultimate film that the brothers would direct together, as on February 25th, 2008, less than a week after it was released, John (who, as both he and his brother often did, has a small role in this film) unexpectedly died of a heart aneurysm at the age of just 39. Mark has continued on by himself since then, making numerous more flicks like Halloweenight, Camp Blood: First Slaughter, Amityville Death House, Amityville Exorcism, Sharkenstein, Bigfoot Vs. Zombies, Frozen Sasquatch, and way too many others to name.

Ostensibly, our two leads are Reggie (David Fife) and Lou (Ken VanSant), these two hick treasure hunters who head up to Skull Mountain in search of a supposed fortune in Native American gold. However, I can't get a grasp on whose idea it was to go up there in the first place. You'd think it would be Reggie, since he has the map of Skull Mountain and knows about the gold, is a tad nerdy in his excitement about it, and when they first get up there, he's the one who eagerly goes out searching with the metal detector,

while Lou opts to stay at the camper and watch TV, saying the only reason he came was to get out of the house and away from his wife for a while. But, on the way up there, when Lou says he hopes the trip pays off, as he's the one who paid a hefty sum for the metal detector, Reggie answers, "I hope it pays off too, Lou. You know, I quit my job to go on this little adventure of yours." I know, I'm already nitpicking, but that discrepancy stuck out to me immediately. Anyway, despite having apparent problems with the camper when Lou loses control of it and they nearly wreck, the two of them, unaware that it was the work of a recently-released demon, continue on. They prove to be rather dickish when they come upon this hiker. When he asks if there's a fast way to get down the mountain, Lou points him in a direction that gets him lost and also results in his getting killed. On top of that, they pretend to not have any food to share with him, which they most certainly do. Upon arriving near the mountain, Reggie goes off with the metal detector, while Lou stays behind and watches some TV, as well as starts farting up a storm due to something he ate earlier. After a lot of searching and digging up a soda can and then a penny, Reggie comes upon an old knife that later turns out to be a talisman meant to ward off the demon. Reggie then sees it looking through the camper window at him later that night, but Lou, naturally, doesn't believe him and teases him about it (he refers to it as "Snack Squash" at one point). The next day, they both go back into the woods, splitting up to cover more ground. Amazingly, neither of them get killed when they do this. Instead, Reggie comes upon the side of Skull Mountain, seeing the eponymous skull-shaped cave carved into it, but then runs off when the demon lunges at him. He meets back up with Lou, who initially still doesn't believe him, but is more willing to listen when he hears the demon growl nearby, sending them both running back to the camper.

Naturally, the thing doesn't start, and after checking it, Lou finds the engine block has melted. He decides to head back down the mountain and try to find a little town at its base, hoping he'll be able to bring back help. Naturally, he's attacked and killed on the way, but when the demon comes for Reggie that night, he fares better, as he has the talisman to ward it off. He's able to stave it off for the rest of the night, and the next day, while searching the woods, he finds Camille, the psychic, lying on the ground unconscious

after the demon attacked her. He wakes her up and she goes with him back to the camper. They don't get much time to interact before things go to hell, but when Camille talks about how the demon seemed to be calling out to her with the visions of its killings, Reggie figures it probably wants to breed with her so it can live on (more like possess her, but we'll get to that). They then decide to try to make it down the mountain and to the town before nightfall, but they take barely a few steps away from the camper before the demon pops up and brutalizes Reggie, who tosses Camille the talisman for protection.

Camille (Cindy Wheeler) is the one who's telling the bulk of the story to Dr. Dawson at the clinic, having made it down the mountain but is now under psychiatric observation and is also a murder suspect (how she knows the details of Reggie and Lou's story, especially since she never Lou, is anyone's guess but that's least of my issues with this flick). Having nightmares about the demon and claiming that it's still coming for her, she then tells Dawson about what happened. While Reggie and Lou were out treasure-hunting, Camille was at her house, being tormented by horrific visions of the demon that caused her pain. Having suddenly received her psychic abilities following an accident, she called up her boyfriend, Frank, to tell him about it. He, however, proved totally dismissive of what she was experiencing and broke things off with her. Camille began writing down her visions, which then started happening every time the demon killed someone. After it killed another woman in her house, Camille decided to head to Skull Mountain, which she knew was where it lurked, as during one vision, she drew an image of the place, and confront it. When she got up there, she mainly just wandered around the woods, until she fought off a zombie that the demon resurrected. Shortly afterward, she came upon Lou's brutalized body and was chased by the demon. She ran blindly through the woods, until she slammed into a tree and knocked herself out. That's where Reggie found her the next day, then took her back to the camper. After they talked and Reggie figured what the demon may have wanted her for, they decided to walk into town, with Camille breaking it to Reggie that Lou was dead. That's when the demon attacked, killing Reggie, and Camille fled with the talisman. She was cornered by the demon, who disarmed her, but managed to fight it off and even stab it with the knife. But, cut back to the present, at the clinic, and the movie ends with the revelation that, while she was unconscious, the demon had its way with Camille and managed to possess her.

Camille's disbelieving boyfriend, Frank, is the role that John Polonia himself plays. An employee at a local news station, Frank is not only dismissive of Camille's claims, thinking they're just random images that her brain has been creating since her accident, but is also fed up with her going on about it. Thus, he breaks up with her. But, later on, when he hasn't heard from her in a while, Frank attempts to call her at her house. Not getting an answer, he decides to go look for her, fearing she may end up hurting herself (he's still a tool, though, saying she's not worth this aggravation), and after not finding her at her house, he heads on up to Skull Mountain (even though he has no way of knowing that Camille went up there). He wanders around the woods and ends up getting killed, which Camille never senses or learns about, meaning that whole section serves no purpose other than to pad out the running time.

None of the other characters are worth talking about in length (not that there are that many of them anyway). Jarvis (Frank Lee Humes), the hunter at the beginning whose bitchy wife (Maria Davis) causes him to miss a shot at some deer when she calls his cellphone (I'm sure that said deer were stock footage), is dumb enough to go searching for the earthquake's epicenter and becomes the demon's first victim, followed shortly afterward by his wife. Dr. Dawson (Shantee Proctor) proves to be a hypocrite when he

repeatedly tells both Camille and the sheriff that he doesn't use the word "crazy," but when he calls the sheriff back after listening to her story, he says, "Yeah, she's as crazy as they come." Not surprisingly, the movie ends with the now possessed Camille murdering him. Then there's that dopey hiker (Steve Torpy) whom Lou leads astray, resulting in him dying in the process. And finally, you have this random woman (Casey Kauffman) whose house the demon enters to attack and kill her while she's in the shower.

I was initially going to complain about how the demon is seemingly going after someone who doesn't live near Skull Mountain, thus contradicting some of the lore, but I decided not to make a big deal about it, as her house may actually be near the mountain for all I know, as the establishing shots don't show you anything (plus, who cares, anyway?). Regardless, she's only credited as "Shower Girl," and is a perfect example of a character who exists purely to provide more cannon fodder. And not to be a pig but, even though she is fairly good-looking, don't get too excited, as you don't see anything at all in this scene.

I shouldn't go into something like this expecting grade-A writing, but there are a number of moments where the script contradicts itself. I've also heard this is kind of par for the course with the Polonia Brothers but, my God, guys, have somebody there as a script supervisor (I know they have no money, but they could get a friend of theirs to serve that function). Besides the discrepancy on whose idea it was for Reggie and Lou to go out to Skull Mountain, and Frank having no reason to look for Camille up there, when Reggie finds Camille and takes her back to the

camper, he tells her, "My friend, Lou, though, he went to town probably about half an hour ago." This scene takes place the day after they found that their camper wouldn't start. Maybe since, as I'll get into, it's sometimes hard to tell what time of day it is, he's as confused as as the viewer, but that baffled me even more than that earlier discrepancy. And speaking of discrepancies, even though Reggie figures the demon wants to breed with Camille, he then says, "It wants you to be its vessel," which suggests possession, and

is what pretty much happens in the end. I don't expect them to come up with a complete mythology for this demon or how it works, but I do ask that they keep what they come up with straight. Also, when Camille confirms that Lou is dead, she says, "I saw it in a vision." No, you came across his body in the woods. Yes, I'm being nitpicky again, but an almost constant stream of errors like that is going to stick out to me.

From the first frame, Forest Primeval has that no budget, shot on digital video look that immediately turns me off. Again, it's not fair, I know, but I've been saddled with so many bad flicks that look like this over the years that I'm sighing in aggravation as soon as I see it, as it always portends bad acting, amateurish makeup and visual effects, and uninspired plots (and boy, does this tick all those boxes). While I was slightly impressed by a couple of shots that start beneath the surface of a small creek and then pan up out of it, and vice versa (whether they actually did

that or used an editing trick, it did still look quite good), that's about the only compliment I can give the Polonia Brothers in terms of technical filmmaking, as the rest is just so-so and amateurish. Like I said, it's sometimes hard to tell what time of day it is, as there are shots of Reggie and Lou inside the camper that, per the establishing exteriors, look as though they're taking place at dusk, but what you can see of the outside through the windows, including when they're asleep later on, looks as though it's fairly well-lit. Normally, I hate day-for-night cinematography, but I

would've gladly taken it here. There are a number of shots from the demon's point-of-view where they used a filter in their camera to make it look more garish and demonic (the way it seems to float and fly through the woods in these shots give off definite Evil Dead vibes), as well as extreme close-ups of its face against a black background, which often appear in Camille's visions, as well as in scenes where the context of it makes no sense. Camille's visions themselves are a flurried mixture of the demon's face,

its killings, and various filters and video effects. They used a good number of different video effects throughout the film, such as sudden fast- and slow-motion, as well as homemade digital effects like the demon's eyes glowing, clouds rolling in, explosions and electrical crackling when it's seemingly destroyed at the end (the sound of the crackling is a stock sound effect that was used back in the days of Hanna-Barbera), making the frame look as though it's

shaking, be it during the opening earthquake and when Reggie is attacked in the camper, and even lightning flashes outside of the clinic during the wraparounds (I don't mean actual lightning bolts but flashes on the screen meant to indicate lightning). And the opening credits are done over a digital image of what looks like a bunch of cells under a microscope. Couldn't tell you their significance, though.

I'll admit, the main location of the forest around Skull Mountain (actually Tioga State Park) is a lovely enough place, and you do get to see plenty of it (more than you'd want to, as I'll get into). You also get to see it during what appears to be two different times of year, as most of the time, it looks like it's in the fall/early winter, with the barren trees and the feeling of it being cold and overcast (there's even snow on the ground in some shots), but other scenes, like the hiker's death and when Reggie finds Camille, appear to have been shot in the spring, as there's green

everywhere and warm sunshine. (I'm sure that was the case, since small budget movies like this do often have to shoot whenever the opportunity rises.) Skull Mountain, an obvious nod of the hat to King Kong, is also given a noteworthy visual in the form of a skull-shaped cave (I initially thought it was just a carving), which was done via a miniature that doesn't look half bad. The rest of the locations, which consist of the camper interiors, Camille's home and neighborhood, the home of the woman whom the demon attacks

while she's in the shower, the TV station where Frank works, and the clinic, are likely all places that were either the cast and crew's actual homes and places of employment, or places they could probably get access to for very cheap. The clinic, in particular, is full of props that don't hold up to scrutiny, like the stethoscope that Dr. Dawson always has around his neck or the stuff in that room where he talks on the phone with the sheriff (that phone itself is so fake-looking).

To the film's credit, you are given some mythology about Skull Mountain, with Reggie reading in a book that it's not only supposedly the burial site for a fortune in gold but also that the Native American tribes who once lived there would decapitate trespassers, then remove all the flesh from the skulls and put them on sticks throughout the area. In addition, there's that knife/talisman that Reggie finds, which is also mentioned in the book, and is explicitly said to be meant to ward off evil spirits and demons. But the actual demon doesn't get any backstory

whatsoever; it's just some ancient evil that was released from the base of Skull Mountain by a random earthquake and now prowls around the area, killing anybody it comes across, and is able to sense that there's a psychic nearby and draws her there so it can have its way with her. It also proves able to take control of Reggie and Lou's camper, as it nearly causes them to crash as they're first driving up there. There's not much to say about its design, as all you see is its skull-like head atop an extendable neck and one floppy rubber hand (there is a full-body image of

it on the back of the DVD that had me thinking I might see some stop-motion; I don't know what the hell I was thinking). At one point, it resurrects some "ancient" corpse (I put ancient in quotation marks because, as you can see, the skull still has a bit of flesh and hair attached) that then claws its way out of the ground. It looks a little cooler than the demon but proves to be completely useless as a crony, as it tries to attack Camille, only for her to knock it to the ground and smash its skull in with little effort. But,

after this is when she comes upon Lou's body, then knocks herself while running from the demon, giving it the opportunity to do what it needed. Even though Camille seemingly destroys it with the talisman, at the end, it's revealed that she's now possessed, as she swings around and attacks Dr. Dawson.

Just like the puppets, props, and makeup design, the gory kills have a very homemade, crude feel to them, with many of them being portrayed through kinetic editing and with digital effects. While we don't see what the demon does to Jarvis' wife, right before she's killed, it beheads him, though said beheading is, as I said, a digital action, along with the blood spurt when his decapitated body lands right next to his head (you can see how that shot was done just by looking at it). The hiker's death is also a decapitation, done in one of those montages of quick, shaky cuts, including shots

of his hand getting increasingly covered with blood, before we see the grisly aftermath (which doesn't look half-bad), along with a shot of his severed head, which is another trick that you can figure out just by looking at it. The shower girl's death is also done through a montage, with a shot of her screaming with her hand over her mouth inner-cut with images of blood flowing down the drain and guts that are just sitting there. I would say that's easily the worst death in the film. Lou's is pretty weak, too, as we see the

demon grab him by the face, in a shot that's repeated three times, and when Camille finds him, he's just lying on the ground with blood on his face and hand. Frank gets slashed across the chest, with more digital blood spurts there, and then lies on the ground, blood pouring out of his mouth, until he dies. The demon proceeds to drag his body away and he's never seen again. And when Reggie dies, it's another quickly edited kill, with close-ups of a bloody wound on his chest and blood pouring out of his screaming mouth. Unfortunately, we don't get to see Dr. Dawson's death at the very end.

I could've forgiven Forest Primeval for the bad acting, so-so direction, and amateurish effects work if it were an entertaining flick, but it's not; it's boring as hell. Yeah, it's just 69 minutes long but, trust me, I feel every single one of those minutes, as you're mostly watching these cardboard characters doing wandering around the woods, often for what feels like an ungodly amount of time. And as picturesque as this location may be, it quickly loses its charm when you have nothing else to look at for long stretches. There are, no joke, sections where you're watching

this go on for five or so minutes straight (that's the part I mentioned during the intro where I was so bored that I forgot what they were even supposed to be doing or that Camille had, by that point, arrived at Skull Mountain as well), and when that reanimated corpse comes upon Camille, it lingers behind her and, oh, so slowly, approaches her before finally attacking, that you're about ready to yell, "Do something!" And when that's not going on, you're either watching the demon stalking from nearby, Camille's psychedelic visions of its evil deeds, or one of these mostly

lackluster death scenes. Even the sequences that might sound somewhat exciting, like the demon taking control of the camper, attacking it while Reggie's inside it alone, or Camille's final confrontation with the demon, have no sense of energy or fun to them whatsoever. Obviously, I'm not going to expect big stunts or action scenes, but that first sequence is done by shaking the camera while the actors mime being tossed around inside an out of control vehicle, the second is more of the same, and

the "climax" consists of Camille getting cornered and disarmed by the demon, telling it that it can never have her, throwing a clump of leaves in its face, and stabbing it with the talisman. I actually laughed at the lowbrow bit of humor earlier of Lou farting constantly, much to Reggie's disgust, because my brain was so numb that I was desperate for any kind of stimulus. I really don't see how even the most hardcore fans of the Polonia Brothers couldn't find this insufferable. If you do genuinely enjoy it, I'm happy for you, but it proves to me that they're a required taste that I'm never likely to get.

I won't lie, though, I do kind of like some of the music by Greg Stanima, whose filmography consists of a lot of similarly bottom of the barrel flicks, including some of Mark Polonia's solo films. It's mostly electronic and done on a synthesizer, as well as on a single keyboard, but there are some tracks that I do like, and they sometimes made the numerous wandering scenes in the woods slightly less painful  Also, the track that plays during the opening credits, which is a melancholic synthesizer piece accompanied by some occasional female vocalizing, isn't too bad either. Now, there are some other themes that I don't like, but it doesn't matter, as I'm not going to remember any of this music once I'm done with this review.

Usually, when I review anything, I try to be as diligent about it as I can, often working in two or three long sessions a day. Thus, I should've finished Forest Primeval much longer ago than I have. But, talking about this damn thing has been such a chore that I've often found myself only writing about it once a day. I'm not proud of that at all, but that goes to show how mind-numbing I find this film. It's the perfect example of everything I don't like to see (bad acting, utterly cardboard characters, screenwriting that's full of continuity errors, lots of amateurish filming and effects techniques, etc.) coming together in something that, as short as it is, is so boring that its running time feels twice as long. I can find some things to like, such as the main location, sporadic instances of interesting camerawork, editing, and makeup effects, and some music I kind of like, but on the whole, this proves to be that I am not the target audience for the Polonia Brothers' films. As I've stressed, nothing against them or anybody who likes their stuff, but I'm never going to watch anything else by them if I can help it.