The red tent.
We follow a group that must inspect an old sanatorium before they demolish it. The building is close to the events we saw in the first movie, and the group will soon find out they are not alone. The old building has secrets that still live there, and they don’t like visitors!
Dark Woods 2 is directed by Pål Øie. He also directed the first movie.
Villmark aka Dark Woods is one of my favorite Norwegian movies and the best horror movie made in Norway. So I was looking forward to see if Dark Woods 2 could match the first movie in terms of quality.
The first thing that struck me after only 10 minutes was that Dark Woods 2 felt like one of the most underrated movies I know of where the plot takes place in an old mental hospital. The movie is Session 9, directed by Brad Anderson.
But unfortunately, Dark Woods 2 is not a new Session 9 or a new Dark Woods. The first thing you notice is that the characters are poorly written. Again, we are following a group of characters that we don’t care about. They don’t have personality. They seem grumpy, and nothing is interesting about them. Such a mistake should be avoided at all costs. Create some likable characters. Is it that difficult?
Then we have something that is just as important as some likable characters, and that’s the atmosphere and tension. Unfortunately, Dark Woods 2 is very weak at that point compared to the first movie.
Dark Woods 2 is not a scary movie. It tries too hard to be scary, and there’s something about the flow and editing that doesn’t feel right. The editing isn’t good where it suddenly switches between following the characters through handheld cameras. It took me out of the movie. It also ruined a lot of the buildup to the scenes that tried to create some tension and atmosphere.
But I don’t think the movie would have been scarier if they had cut out the use of the handheld cameras because Dark Woods 2 isn’t scary at all. I never felt my heart rate increase. I only felt bored.
Then we have the old caretaker who’s in the wrong movie. He’s the proof of what’s wrong with Dark Woods 2. The movie tries to be mysterious and creepy when a tired caretaker hasn’t left the building. And surprise, he has a secret. This character ruins so much of the movie experience. Unfortunately, things don’t get better towards the end because the scary characters feel like they come from a Wrong Turn movie. It’s so unoriginal.
The problem with Dark Woods 2 is that it doesn’t dare to be Norwegian. The first movie dared to be itself, but the sequel chickens out. It becomes a kind of American B-movie, only that Dark Woods 2 at least visually looks good. But the building itself and the rooms lack soul. In the best movies in this genre, some rooms become a character that will create problems for the characters we follow. Dark Woods 2 fails to create this character. The whole movie lacks its own identity.
Dark Woods 2 tries to connect to the events we saw in the first movie. But no matter how hard it tries, it feels like watching a completely different movie that doesn’t have a connection to the first movie. These are two very different movies where the first movie offers genuine horror using simple tools. Dark Woods 2 tries to make things bigger and better, with the result that it loses its identity. What made the original movie so great, is something you won’t find in the sequel.