Lumberjack Man (2015)

I love this movie so much

Too much of everything

Such a frustrating disappointment

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Very like what was said with 'Knucklebones', have an appreciation for black comedy and horror (and just as much when mixed together) and the concept was kind of interesting. So although expectations were far from high, considering the general standard of low budget films seen recently, part of me was hoping that 'Lumberjack Man' would be at least tolerable.There are definitely worse films than 'Lumberjack Man', of the horror genre and overall, and it is not even close to being one of the worst, let alone the worst, low budget films seen recently. That on the other hand doesn't make it good, it does far too little with the potential it had in the concept and it doesn't even have enough to make it tolerable. There is little engaging and it is cheesy as sin. 'Lumberjack Man's' least bad component was the music. There was something somewhat ominous about it and it does occasionally give a suspenseful touch. Sadly, that is pretty much the only praise to give. The pace very badly lumbers, which really makes the film dull, and it is not always easy to figure out what is going on because the story is just so thin and tonally weird.Regarding the villain, there is nothing surprising or sinister. Actually comes over more as silly and cheesy in behaviour and the goofy look. The lack of any atmosphere, let alone tension and suspense, is a hindrance as is the too long by half an hour length.As is the incredibly bad writing. Very stilted and induces too often some unintentional laughs. There were attempts at dark humour, but it was not dark or sharp enough and was instead silly and clumsy. Madsen's explanation is just ridiculous. Even worse is the acting, with beyond description terrible performances from the whole younger cast and it even makes Michael Madsen, clearly phoning in and either doing the film for money or as a favour, look bad. The characters are incredibly annoying and far from interesting, there is no development and the way they behave too often is stupid and illogical.The production values all round look cheap, especially the haphazard editing. The story has nothing engaging, suspenseful or scary, it's just far-fetched to an intelligence insulting degree, incredibly dull due to trying to stretch things out to pad the too long length and just too bland. Anything done to try and spice up the supposedly scary moments came over as overdone and gratuitous.Overall, very poor in almost every single area. 2/10 Bethany Cox

A bunch of rather older-looking kids travel to a Christian camp out in the woods. There's a lot of painful silliness the bus. Once they arrive we meet their ridiculous leader, a pretty girl also in charge, and the cook(?). It's not long before they start taking their clothes off and the marijuana jokes begin. For some reason only one pair of girls seem to be Christian, the rest not so much. Meanwhile some stranger is traveling in the direction of the camp. He stops at the park ranger office to warn that everyone is going to die and they should evacuate immediately. As evidence he offers some old newspaper clippings.But of course he's right. By now someone or something dragging some large-pancake cart has started killing kids. It takes a while before the guy who's some researcher arrives at the camp and warns them. At that point we learn who the killer is and why he kills. It's a rather ridiculous explanation that I won't give here. Soon enough the killer arrives in the middle of dining hall and the mayhem is on. At this point the movie decides who the lead characters are and those will have figure out a way to eliminate this killer for good.I really like the spirit in which this movie was made. I'm all for 80's-style raunchy teen slasher flicks. But as often happens, they had to ruin it by making it a parody/comedy. One movie-making convention seems to be that if you combine teens and violence you have to mask it as a comedy. Unfortunately making comedy and even more so, parody, is far more challenging than straight-forward horror. There are couple of good lines though.Lumberjack Man is 1:45 hours--at least 15 minutes too long, a strange decision when you don't have a lot of budget. Another convention of low-budget movie-making is that you've got to have at least one big name in your cast. In this case it's Michael Madsen who does a good job, not taking the role too seriously. The rest of the main cast does surprisingly well. All of them give committed performances. The problem is the silliness factor, not the acting. One weakness of this movie is that it really doesn't give us a lead character for which to care. Of course, it's the girl who doesn't take her clothes off who will end up being the lead, but for most of the movie, she isn't. For a movie like this, the cast isn't particularly attractive. Brina Palencia in some tertiary role is lovely though. Then there are some porn stars here for some reason.I'm very conflicted about this movie. I enjoyed the gore, violence, and nudity but hated the goofiness. The movie-makers have some talent and enthusiasm but botched it.

Going out to the woods, the counselors of a bible study camp find that the area is home to a demonic logger who is intent on tormenting anyone who comes into the area and forces them to try to find a way of ending his rampage before he kills them all.This here turned out to be quite the fun and highly enjoyable slasher/comedy effort. What really helps this one get quite a bit of fun here is the rather fun and goofy comedic nature of what's happening though it still maintains a pretty serious attitude overall. The comedy is mostly centered around the absurdity of what happens throughout here being treated with the utmost seriousness and straight-faced mentality, which is all about the obsession and singular-minded fascination the killer has with pancakes. Bringing them along with him to every kill he unleashes, the incessant manner of drenching them in the blood of his victims and having them constantly be a focus here in the film with the way they're almost always on-screen makes the film's focus on them seem all the goofier for all the time it's here, especially once it's all tied together with the explanation back-story that's so inherently goofy and silly that it becomes wholly enjoyable. As well, there's the other comedic virtues present here with the way this one treats the killer who tends to almost always treat the encounters here as there's a jokey quality they all react to him appearing before them. There's a great deal of laughs to come from how they all meet up with him thinking the entire set-up is a joke as well as the actual kill methods here that are carried out just absurdly that there's little not to like here. Even the fact that this is a Bible Camp means there's some fun times to come along here, with this going for the group blatantly ignoring the religious commandments for a wholly enjoyable time where it plays with many of the conventions here where it really enhances the sleaze and depravity that's to be expected around a film set in this kind of environment. Once all the fun is over, the fact that there's still some solid horror elements at play makes this one even better as the hulking killer comes off as a truly imposing figure, the numerous kills are quite creative and graphic enough to satisfy the true gore-hounds with how they get pulled off and it has some chilling stalking scenes that are pretty chilling even if they're somewhat played for laughs. The various stalking scenes in the woods come off rather nicely with the numerous confrontations throughout here which all manage to set-up the final massacre at the camp during the dinning hall sequence which is all sorts of fun with numerous kills, some great humor and thrilling action that comes along with how this one finally gets resolved which makes for a really enjoyable time. Even with all this fun stuff on-display there's a few minor negative points here with the big one being the overlong running time as there's no way this one should be over a hundred minutes. A lot of that is taking the absurdity and comedy to it's fullest potential, which in the end stretches out the comedy far more than it really needs to and making the film too long. As well, the comedy is a little too much for some which can lead to some bland watches with the fact that there's some utterly goofy stuff happening when it really doesn't need it. Otherwise this one here was a lot of fun.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Extreme Graphic Language, Nudity, some sexual content and drug use.

Can someone tell me what i've just sat through? This has to be one of the main contenders for worst Film in living memory. I thought for a moment this was Horror Comedy but the "jokes" weren't funny and the Horror was nonexistent, so what genre does this fit into then? Is there a genre simply called "Bad Films"? There were plenty of Boobs on offer and not just from the female Cast members but from Script to Camera work to general acting to Continuity. The Kills were shockingly bad, a few of the Female Characters who dared to bare were obviously Blind as they failed to notice guys standing directly infront of them ogling them and perhaps the worst crime of the Film we had the Film Industry equivalent of Graham Poll issuing 3 yellow cards to Josip Simunic before sending him off, yes, we saw a Character being killed not Once but Twice!! A Ranger who inexplicably showed up on foot and seeing a pile of Pancakes randomly in the middle of the road on a cart got mashed by Mr Easterday, generously covering said Pancakes in a healthy dose of the Red stuff only to then show up equally as randomly later in the Film at Easterday's secluded Woodland Shack for his second bloody death of this unbelievably poor piece of "art" immortalized in Celluloid. My eyes are burning after watching this and my head genuinely hurts. I can't believe they managed to wring over 90 minutes out of this, in fact 60 minutes would've been 60 minutes too much.