HORROR YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: WAKE WOOD (2011)

 WAKE WOOD (2011)

Despite echos of Pet Semetary and The Wicker Man, Wake Wood still manages to be a spooky tale of not leaving dead things lie. Young couple, Patrick and Louise (Aiden Gillen and Eva Birthistle) loose their daughter, Alice (Ella Connolly) in a tragic accident when one of veterinarian Patrick’s canine charges mauls her to death. Heartbroken, the couple move to the small backwoods town of Wake Wood to try to get away from the awful memories, but fate intervenes. There are some pagan practices going on in this strange little town including an ancient ceremony that is said to be able to bring back the dead for 3 days, as long as the party in question has been dead for less then a year. Now the Daley’s have a chance to see their dead daughter one last time and properly say goodbye. But this is a horror film, so it’s no surprise that things go wrong with gruesome results. After all, the Daley’s did lie about how long their precious Alice has been dead and now what has come back may no longer be their little girl.

Wake Wood has some flaws. Aside from the familiar story, it does cut away too fast sometimes from some of the gruesome moments without giving them full effect and the deliberately slow pace may not be for everyone, but it is still an effective horror with some good atmosphere, plenty of creepy goings on and some very bloody mayhem, especially during it’s last act. The final scene is also quite chilling, even thought not being entirely unexpected. Director David Keating gives the film some nice moody atmosphere and some very creepy moments, despite the derivative nature of the script. He also gets good performances from his cast especially from young Miss Connolly as the reanimated and not quite right Alice. A spooky little flick from the new Hammer Films for a stormy Saturday night on the couch.

A spooky 3 reanimated corpses!