The Backwoods
2024 · 15m
Directed by Garret E. Williams
Genres: drama, horror, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
Two brothers, taunted by an unseen lurker, confront chilling secrets buried in their transracial family's sinister past.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The transracial family angle promises subversion but lands in fairly familiar horror-thriller territory—lurking threats, buried secrets, the usual machinery. I'd need to see how Williams actually weaponizes that premise rather than just decorates it.
A competent entry in the contemporary horror-drama lineage, but the film treads well-worn ground: the unseen menace, the family reckoning, the tonal shift from genre to introspection. Execution matters here, and the craft would need to exceed the premise to justify the festival circuit.
Williams plants the real tension in the specificity of the transracial dynamic—not as plot device but as the actual fracture point—and the film's restraint with the lurker (keeping it unseen) forces the brothers' confrontation inward, which is where the real horror lives. That decision to let performance and silence carry the dread is what elevates this above standard backwoods thriller.
Festivals
- Spooktacular Film Fest for Horror & Sci-Fi, Official Selection