Black Forest (2012)

Too much of everything

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Now this is more like it. The Syfy original "Black Forest" actually shows that these productions can surprise and what we got was passable entertainment. Asinine, but enjoyable. What it makes up for in its low- budget, is in its concept creativity. Sure the execution is quite so-so and the CGI can be flat and laughable, but the atmospherics do work because of its well-etched production designs. Creating a fairytale world brought up many possibilities to explore and these disjointed stories involving wolves, fairies, dwarfs, witches and trolls do come alive. These aren't your friendly childhood stories, as some unlucky tourists find themselves getting lost in a magical forest in Germany and trying to stay alive by not becoming apart of the story. How to keep that from happening; sticking to the tradition of the fairy-tales. The script might be cheesy, but the story stays intriguing and creates some amusing, off-the-wall scenarios. I do think that the first half setting up the fantastical predicament is much stronger than the second half where things get senseless as the tourists are trying to figure a way out. The performances are agreeable despite their leaden characters with abeyant Ben Cross being the name grabber. Humour can be a little self- knowing, but it's not a distraction. One thing I noticed was the music theme that was constantly played resembled that of the 1987 "Predator". Better than expected SyFy original. "Let's hope there's no wicked witch inside".

A group of tourists take a 'mid-summers eve tour' to the Black Forest of Germany to experience the night of the year when the line between our reality and the spirit one is at it's thinnest. Once there they are seemingly transported to a mischievous parallel fairy-tale world in this original Syfy film.What started off pretty well (term applied loosely as in 'pretty well for a Syfy original) soon became awash with mediocrity. The set up was interesting enough and the plot was intriguing, I liked the fractured fairy tale approach but somehow the film lost its footing as well as my interest. My Grade: C-

I admit I dislike most of SyFy's movies, and was not expecting much watching Black Forest. However, while it was not exactly a great movie, it was one of SyFy's better and more tolerable efforts.SyFy does deserve kudos for thinking up such a good and original concept, a real departure from the typical creature, disaster and fantasy films dreamt up that a vast majority of the time are badly done. I enjoyed some scenes, my favourite being the seven cannibal dwarfs attired like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, though the scenes with the spiders from Little Miss Muppet, the Troll Under the Bridge and the Witch and her Gingerbread house also stood out. The acting while nothing extraordinary was a notch above other SyFy efforts(where it feels phoned in or shockingly bad such as recently Annihilation Earth), with nobody toe-curlingly bad really. Ben Cross looks as though he is really enjoying himself as villain Cazmar. I also loved the production design, especially that for the forest which is rich in colour.However, some of the characters still annoyed me, by all means they are not as blatantly stereotypical as some of SyFy's other movies(in in disaster movies like Miami Magma or something like that) but there are at least three that struck me as too stupid to live sort of characters. Also, while the concept was great and there were some scenes that were memorable and surprisingly satisfying, the overall story at times has a very scatter-shot feel and there are some scenes that don't really make much sense. The dialogue is on the cheesy and lame side, and while the effects are miles above effects seen in Titanic II for example, I got the sense that a lot of work went into the production design but the lacking budget caused the effects to not have the quality they could've done.Overall, one of SyFy's better efforts but still flawed. 5/10 Bethany Cox

So we settled in with our Chinese Delivery for SyFy Saturday its become a ritual of sorts sometimes it last less than 30 minutes as we lose interest and start channel surfing however this weekend was different they debuted two movies and of the two this was by far the best. We really enjoyed the movie it really tries to make the best of every cent of its miniscule budget with decent performances, interesting twists, and special FX which could of course have been better are not as bad as some. My partner is not much of a fan but he sat thru it all and I have to say I would watch it again since I missed some bits and pieces as I devoured my dinner and we talked about the storyline. Sadly the film that came after this one was so bad we both went about other activities. One other thing of note we enjoyed their use of flowers to add a fantasy like sense of color in contrast to the forest it was a nice touch considering the budget you can't have all these wonderful sets and cgi to enhance so it was great old style filmmaking making the best out of what you got and being inventive I can still see the colorful mushrooms growing in the forest.