Alone In The Woods

Justin Rogers (Brady Bluhm), a 10-year-old serial prankster, unwillingly accompanies his family to a wilderness park for Thanksgiving weekend. At a rest stop, Justin accidentally gets into the wrong vehicle, an identical van being driven by goofy criminals Perry (Chick Vennera) and Kurt (Matthias Hues). By the time the boy realizes his mistake, he's at their cabin. Justin spies on Perry and Kurt as they leave, then arrive later with a hostage. She's Chelsea Stuart (Krystee Clark), a toy tycoon's teen daughter being held for a $1 million ransom. Justin locates his family, who have been pestering local hayseed cops with their alert for a missing boy. But the Rogers believe Justin's kidnap tale is just another prank. Alone, Justin goes back and frees Chelsea. To hunt them down Perry summons his old friend "the Tracker" (Jim Doughan), who indeed leads the kidnappers right to the young fugitives. By then, however, the Rogers family has realized that Justin was telling the truth. They lead a small posse of bumbling lawmen to rescue the kids and arrest the bad guys. Chelsea's wealthy father joins the Rogers for a Thanksgiving celebration.

It's been posited that the folks at New Horizons purge themselves after grinding out much lewd and violent dreck for the direct-to-video market by making harmless children's features, almost as a form of therapy. To judge from ALONE IN THE WOODS a whole lot of purging went on. Producers Andrew Stevens and Ashok Amritraj, responsible for much sinfully dumb horror, action, and "erotic thrillers," leave behind the world of makeup gore and augmented breasts for what amounts to an anemic blend of "The Ransom of Red Chief" and the HOME ALONE series (actually, it's much less violent than John Hughes's comedy blockbusters). ALONE IN THE WOODS is one of those comedies that assumes a guy with his foot stuck in a bucket is hilarious--the adjective "lame" would seem most apt, and the only honest laugh comes from a black-and-white flashback to the Tracker's youth. Bluhm looks too bright for this stuff, Vennera and Hues try to generate a spark of energy in their bickering byplay, and nobody for a moment pretends the material has any realism, suspense or thrills, although there is that cliched moral about a businessman dad (Chelsea's) learning to spend quality time with his offspring. That's all well and good for sleaze-weary actors and filmmakers, but viewers can spend quality time elsewhere than ALONE IN THE WOODS. leave a comment