SYNOPSICS
The Barrens (2012) is a English movie. Darren Lynn Bousman has directed this movie. Stephen Moyer,Mia Kirshner,Allie MacDonald,Peter DaCunha are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2012. The Barrens (2012) is considered one of the best Horror movie in India and around the world.
This movie is about the Vineyard family and their trip to the New Jersey Pine Barrens. There is a legend that the Jersey Devil lives in these woods. It came about after a woman known as Mother Leeds had 13 children, but she offered up the 13th child to the Devil so she and her other children didn't have to leave their house as they were going to be forced out by the town folk because she was having too many kids in the area back in the 1700s. So it's now the present, and the Vineyard family are going to camp there so the father (Stephen Moyer) can release his father's ashes. But while there they hear that someone has gone missing, and Richard (Moyer) thinks it's the work of the Jersey Devil. So they move their camp site to get away from the rest of the campers only to find that they're in more trouble than they were before. But is the legend of the Jersey Devil real, or is it just another story?
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The Barrens (2012) Reviews
Utterly disappointing creature feature
Hoping to reconnect together, an estranged family on a camping trip in the Pine Barrens learn the local legend involving the Jersey Devil is real when the voracious creature appears and forces the family to deal with it to escape the woods. This here is one of the more frustrating and problematic creature features around as there was a chance to do something special here. The setting here is a dark, creepy forest ripe with really terrifying layouts that are perfect for unleashing a voracious creature, it's quite a decent-looking creature with quite a chilling back-story to begin with, and there's some fun to be had when it gets the family lost in the back-part of the woods along the later half, but instead this one tends to involve a slew of increasingly bizarre and outright unnecessary subplots that make this one seem to go on forever. Adding in the usual family drama is more than enough and never really adds much new material to be influenced by this tactic, which feels like a continuation of the clichés anyway, yet the fact that there's so much extra happening going on here that the beginning to this one is so hard to get into it seems to go on forever dealing with the family issues, teen angst, the dead dog and the quest for closure about his father just makes for a tough time overall. All these subplots simply cause the actual attacks to get pushed back so much that the fun attacks in that second half come so late their inclusion is almost an afterthought and a case for being too little, too late to save this one from the potential it could've had about chasing down the revelers in the forest and them getting caught in the middle the way this starts off as, but even without this plot the beast itself and the action in the final half when he's mad and delirious do make this one somewhat interesting and save it somewhat. Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and children-in-jeopardy.
Starts boring, gets mediocre and ends terrible
It's not the worst horror movie I have seen and I wished it wasn't a horror movie at all. Basically the "Legend" of the Jersey Devil is just a badly integrated background plot, anything would have done the job here, even a story about a wild bear going rampant... The opening scenes are like in every B-grade horror movie, a pair wandering through the woods, getting lost, finding strange things and then a sudden cut and the actual movie begins. Of course at the home of a (not so) happy family preparing for a camping trip. After finishing the movie I felt the opening scene completely useless, it does not even set the right mood for the movie that follows. As the story develops (painfully slowly) we find that the patchwork family is pretty normal, although the amount of problems presented here is a bit too much in my opinion. There are some small references (or should I say stolen ideas) to characters and stereotypes from other great horror movies and authors of the past. You soon learn that the father is a bit stressed out and is pushing the family to some personal goal, not a camping trip. This is actually the only thing that was kind of well done in this movie. The "secret" about the father and what drives him is well embedded and this part of the story told in a good pace. What couldn't believe is that a living father would ever endanger his family in such a way he does, long before he lost control about his decisions. That guy neglects every signal of impeding danger and he ignores every helping hand, even from his beloved ones. This is too much story crunching and totally unreal. The middle part of the movie is still the best part, as the plot gets denser and things start to happen. When all hell breaks loose I didn't believe in a monster flick anymore and it felt good. It was way more proper to see this movie as a psychological (horror) thriller...and then the final scenes happened. Everyone screams too much, stumbles over invisible branches on the floor all the time and a silly scene with a shotgun hobo and a wild cat are added to prolong the really idiotic last scene that spoils the entire movie. Or one could say it completes the circle as the final scene fits very well with the opening scene. Both belong into a C- movie while the middle part is, though over-constructed and a bit far stretched, quite good compared to the rest. It felt like two movies, the monster version is something I wish I hadn't seen at all, while the middle part had some Hitchcockian elements. Stephen Moyer and Mia Kirshner play their roles solid and in the last part of the movie really convincingly. The kids, well, Allie MacDonald seems to stay a TV series actress for good reason, I hoped for more but it seems beyond here capability. DeCunha plays Danny Boy like on drugs, don't know what to expect here in the future. So, the Devil story was silly and the movie will disappoint horror and thriller fans alike. Camera was quite good in some parts, the rest was constructed to uncaring that I wouldn't actually recommend this movie to anyone.
Wasted opportunity, there's no Jersey Devil here
Darren Lynn Bousman took a step down from the SAW sequels and the MOTHER'S DAY remake to deliver this cheap-looking, shot on the quick piece of horror trash. It's a largely uninteresting film, shot in the woods and following a family on a camping holiday from hell. What's most apparent is the almost singular lack of atmosphere building which I had expected given the Jersey Pine Barrens setting. Ostensibly this is a film about the Jersey Devil, with various no-name cast members getting munched on by the mythical beast, but it turns out to be a family drama for the most part instead. That's not good, given that the female characters are annoying and the male characters dull. Stephen Moyer seems to have some cult following after his role in the vampire TV series TRUE BLOOD but I found his jaded role here to be tiring and depressing for the most part. A shame Shawn Ashmore (THE DAY) couldn't have been around for more than the opening cameo. There's a big twist in the story here which is about the only thing the film has going for it; something entirely unconnected to the Jersey Devil or the setting. I liked it, but even this twist isn't handled very well and it all ends in a disappointingly low key way. A disappointment all round, in fact.
Devils and Deers and Bears - Oh my!
Alright, lets cut to the chase here, The Barrens, a spin on The Jersey Devil legend, is no uber great movie. Chastised and frowned upon by much of the horror community, you have to wonder just what was expected of a production like this - a pic that's early notices suggested it was never going to shake the earth of the horror crowd? The Barrens is competent film making in the context of the budget afforded it. When you look at some of the films that have been churned out on the various sci-fi and horror channels out their in cable land, then this definitely has more going for it. True! There's the usual implausibilities and director and writer Darren Lynn Bousman has pacing problems, but there's good thought gone into the screenplay here, Bousman looking to add a little more to his film than merely being a "monster in the woods" shocker. There's also decent performances from the cast, which only comes to fruition when things finally go belly up in the last third. Not one to recommend with any sort of confidence, especially to the tough horror loving crowd, but if you are after a "decent" "B" type horror to view while you are pottering about doing stuff in your lounge (or basements), then it proves itself to be more viable than some Syfy channel trash that is churned out at regular intervals. 5.5/10
Darren Lynn Bousman's output gets worse and worse.
Darren Lynn Bousman directed some of the more watchable Saw sequels and the cult, horror sci-fi rock opera Repo! The Genetic Opera. Since then, his movies just get worse and worse. After his barely okay Mother's Day, I didn't have high hopes for this movie but it still managed to disappoint me. True Blood actor Stephen Moyer stars as an upper middle class family man that drags his wife, teenage daughter, and pre-adolescent son out camping to the same place he used to go with his father. Once they arrive at a heavily populated camp site, he immediately begins acting crazier and crazier but this doesn't seem to concern his family, who agree to follow him even deeper into the woods. Along the way, he is haunted by visions of local legend the Jersey Devil, a man eating demon spawn that supposedly stalks the woods. Not much of The Barrens makes sense and Stephen Moyer's performance is just terrible. He plays the whole film in the same note of crazed, squinting intensity. He rants, pops pills, shoves his kids, and throws jealous temper tantrums at his wife so frequently that he makes Jack Nicholson in The Shining seem balanced. It's completely unbelievable that his family wouldn't be more concerned by his insanity. Mia Kirshner of The Black Dahlia and The L Word and the rest of his family are better, but they're not given enough personality to impress. Erik Knudson, of Scream 4, Saw 2, and Jericho is also great is a supporting role as a skate punk the daughter befriends and he steals every scene he's in but he doesn't have much screen time. Aside from a cool looking creature, which may or may not only exist in the father's imagination, there's not much to The Barrens and it just limps along like a wounded hiker for the first hour. Things pick up in the last 30 minutes but it's too little too late and down ending seems forced and, like the rest of the movie, has some major logic issues. I just really can't recommend this movie to anyone.