Three years after a car accident in which he killed a girl, Matt Sullivan (Patrick Muldoon) is finally moving on. He's still haunted by nightmares and a sense of guilt that he let his mother and well-connected uncle get him off the hook, even though he was driving drunk. But now he has a new girlfriend, Dawn (Keegan Connor Tracy), and they're about to spend a weekend with her family, who live deep in a rural area that locals call "Blackwoods." They have dinner at the Silverstone Diner, spend a couple of hours at the Yellow Rose Motel and then things get weird. Dawn disappears for a walk in the dark, and a man with an ax bursts into the room. Matthew escapes and returns with the motel clerk (Clint Howard), but the intruder is gone. The local sheriff (Michael Pare) seems to doubt Matthew's account of things, claiming he's never heard of Dawn's family. Remembering that Dawn said her family's home was down a back road near the motel, Matthew goes snooping, and as soon as he peeps in the window of the ramshackle house he finds, Matthew realizes he's in big trouble: There's Dawn, bickering with the ax man — apparently her brother — as two more hulking siblings and their angry parents watch. Next thing Matthew knows, he's on kangaroo trial for his life: The girl he ran down was Dawn's younger sister, and her family doesn't feel justice was served. What at first appears to be a standard-issue thriller about a city slicker who runs afoul of unfriendly country folk actually has loftier ambitions, revealed in an 11th hour twist that doesn't induce the sharp intake of breath that was obviously intended. The film's poky pacing is a liability — the setup takes an awfully long time — as is the soundtrack, which bluntly underscores the movie's thematic underpinnings: "Yesterday was yesterday," one singer wails, "and today I feel so far away." "Where do we go from here?" another wonders. And the information revealed ever-so-slowly by repetitive, blue-tinted flashbacks doesn't significantly change your initial impressions of Matthew's actions before, during and after the accident: It's clear from the outset that he was driving carelessly and thought first of himself, but now regrets his recklessness and failure to take responsibility. When the precise nature of Matthew's predicament finally comes into sharp focus, the revelation fails to justify the build-up. --Maitland McDonagh
