Review: The Legend of Harrow Woods

The Legend of Harrow Woods (also called Evil Calls)

This is an artsy film with very little plot. It is also non-linear and I don’t think making sense was important to the writer-director. So now you have more warning than I got when I picked up the DVD. The box lists some the actors who appear in it such as Rik Mayall, Norman Wisdom, Jason Donovan and Robin Askwith. It is true they are in the film but none of them are main characters except for perhaps Jason Donovan.

There are two stories being told throughout the film. One is the story of the Internetters – a bunch irritating spoilt brats who have this thing where they go to haunted places and investigate them on the birthday of one the club’s members Gary (Jason Donovan) and Karl Richard Waters) run a website for the club. Gary has found out about a story of a family who have disappeared in Harrow Woods in New England ( yeah sure New England). The area has a legend that the area was cursed by a witch when they executed her there. So the Internetters are going to Harrows Woods with a bunch hand-held cameras to investigate, like a posh brat version of the Scooby Gang. The whole thing is getting streamed live on their website.

One of the group, Anna is psychic and she keep getting flashes of the family that disappeared. Through Anna’s visions we learn more of that second story (and enjoy it more, leaving it each time with regret). George Carney, his wife Vivienne and their two kids go the woods with George’s brother Vincent (Robin Askwith.).George thinks Vivienne and Vincent are having an affair and this fear is manifested in a series of identical interactions with three different toilet attendants. The first is Norman Wisdom looking very old and frail. The next one is Rik Mayall in full Alan B’stard mode and the third is a woman in a mask naked under her suit jacket in a toilet full of naked women wearing blindfolds.

This film really tried very hard to be weird with horrible images flashing by. The visions of the Carney family seems to be from a different film with a decent cast and a strong David Lynch vibe and its all shot on real film which has been processed to look old and decayed.

But this reasonably interesting film has been cut up and grafted into a badly acted shaky-cam Blair Witch copy. There only seems be two actors among the Internetters, Karl and Gary. The rest of them are very poor. They are also all very similar looking and a lot action is in the dark so its difficult to see what’s going on. It did not help things when Eileen Daly appeared as another psychic called Victoria which giving the film a cheesy ham attack.

The 3D was one thing that seemed to work out. It was dark and often hallucinatory and in those scenes it worked out nicely.

I cannot recommend this film to anyone I know since I think they will all hate it . I didn’t hate it but I don’t imagine seeking it out to watch again. It has some female nudity and a small amount of gore (not counting the gallons of red liquid splashing about all over the place

Rating 5/10

• IMDb page http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0845952/
• Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Legend-Harrow-Woods-3D-DVD/dp/B0052CGFHI
• There’s more info about this film here  http://mjsnewsblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/richard-driscoll-has-risen-from-grave.html