The Retreat

Hidden gem here. Its a little slow in the beginning, but stick with it, it gets much better. I thought it would be close to garbage according to the 4.0 ratings. The movie has much more depth and some nice twists, much more than most horror movies lately. Highly recommended, IF you like horror/thriller movies. Bravo, great job 8/10

It's an extremely difficult thing to pull off a story in which you give as little information to the audience as possible. The adage of "show, don't tell" sometimes ends up being too much and a story just ends up being completely indecipherable. This film seems to border upon one of those in which they showed too much and told too little. Gus and Adam go hiking, as Adam is about to get married. They stop at a professor's cabin, have psychadelic tea and learn about the Wendigo. They hike some more and go to sleep. Gus is attacked by a Wendigo and stabs it dead. When he wakes up next morning he finds he has stabbed Adam. More stuff happens, including some brief flashbacks and encounters with some more Wendigo and Gus wakes up and Adam is alive and well. While I got the sense of a "fantasy vs reality" struggle going on at times, I couldn't really figure out what this film was going for, as while they ultimately did apparently attempt an expo-dump towards the end, the ideas were simply too dispersed to really click together in a coherent way. It's entirely feasible that I was just too dumb to figure it out but there just weren't enough clues in the film itself to piece it together.

You know, even in today's quarantine situation, no part of me ever wants to go to a cabin with my friends for an isolated vacation. I've seen too many movies where a bunch of guy pals go up north and end up all dead or worse. The Retreat is the next one that reminds me that I should stay right where I am, in my wonderful movie room basement, cataloging my Mexican VHS horror favorites and wondering whether or not I should even go upstairs. Gus and Adam weren't as smart. They went up to the Adirondack High Peaks of Upstate New York and ended up running into a monster. But now, Gus finds himself all by himself, going crazy and convinced that he's being hunted by the Wendigo. Written and directed by Bruce Wemple, whose Monstrous was about a woman discovering that a trip to - you guessed it - the Adirondack High Peaks of Upstate New York wasn't such a good idea because one of her friends is possessed by a beast much like Bigfoot. Grant Schumacher, who plays Gus in this movie, was also in that as Jamie, and Dylan Grum, who is Adam here, played Squatch in Monstrous. Here's some further advice: if you are going backpacking in the woods, do not take any hallucinogenic drugs. Have we learned nothing from the slasher films of our youth? The crazy thing is that there may be more than one Wendigo out here in the woods. And beyond just killing people, they like to make them go crazy first. They are also usually cannibals that have tasted the flesh of their fellow man in the forest, if I know my Native American lore (or just remember when Wolverine fought one). The Retreat is available on demand and on DVD - all hail physical media, look for this at a WalMart near you! - from Uncork'd Entertainment, who were nice enough to send us a review copy.

Spent most of time screwing my eyes up to try and see anything happening... why is this filmed mostly in the dark- this does not make a film scary, just annoying and also too much use of a foreboding soundtrack does the opposite of putting you on edge. No script to speak or just very confusing.

Looks great, sounds great. Just when you think it's going nowhere - Boom! Plot twist after plot twist after plot twist pull you right back in! Admittedly, it gets a bit confusing in the final act, as the movie jumps back and forth between multiple timelines. One massive flaw- the 'Wendigo(s)' look ridiculous and basically move around like 'men in costumes'. Other than that, a solid movie!

If you look past the terrible direction and the horrible acting, sound mixing messed this movie up. Community college level filmmaking. It's only a 2 star because kudos to the film crew for braving all the snow.

Sure, this movie tries to have an artsy, plot-twisty feel. But the two realities that are presented in the movie are easy enough to understand and I thought it was interesting to see both sides of it. It certainly held my attention, and given most movies these days I give it a big plus for that reason alone! The creature designs were interesting enough (albeit low budget, but that isn't always terrible!) I think this movie would even be worth a rewatch, but I don't think it's my new favorite by any means. 5.5(teetering on 6)/10