Redwood Massacre: Annihilation (2020) User Reviews

What a mess... what have they done with this franchise?

[destroyerwod · 3/10 · 31 October 2020]

Ok i hate to review with spoilers but i kinda need to do it there, but at the same time its not like the spoilers aspects really give away crucial plot points...

I watched the first movie last year, taught it was a basic but alright slasher movie. Looking back i should had gave it more than 4, probably a 5. It was creepy, gruesome, it didn't bring anything to the genre but it was alright.

Now for some reasons they decided to make a sequel... bringing scream queen Danielle Harris (who does a fine job in her role) and honestly... i think this movie could had been alright if "Max" would had been the new killer.

You see, you are presented with a bunch of characters trying to find out what happened with what i guess is the first movie murders, you seen a picture once but its really brief so im not sure if this was a character from the first movie who got murdered. You also meet Max, wich right away is presented as a bad guy that kill the first movie "final girl" (but recasted...) and i think THIS could had been really interesting if done properly.

The problem its not. They decided to turn what was a basic but alright slasher movie into some kind of governement conspiracy thing? Turn out Max was just another hired goon or "prospect" by them, he get outsmarted and left to be slaughtered by either the first movie killer (i don't remember if he died) or a new one? Either way at this point we just don't care anymore.

2 character seem to survive and kill the killer, but are unceremonouisly shot down by some kind of governement agents we only briefly heard about in one scene when she call for help.

Honestly, if you are some kind of dude who click to read spoiler reviews without having seen the movie you probably thinking "whuuuuuttt" and yeah you wouldn't be wrong. The story is a MESS. And no its not just me badly recaping it.

So sure the actors were fine, Danielle Harris did a great job as usual, the Max character was creepy just enought and i hoped he would had get a better role overall, but otherwise the movie is so disapointing. Its not even like the kills are great. The best kills are made by Max, the copycat killer (i guess) and otherwise the masked killer from the first movie do not do much. At some point he saw the legs of one random dude but we never even met him before, its like "who are you, why should i care for you" ?

This movie could had been just another creepy fun slasher, but turned out to be a huge disapointement and a try to make a low budget slasher flick into something bigger wich it is not. Im generous with a 4, like i said thinking back i should had gave the first a 5, cause this one is clealy inferior.

Even if you enjoyed the first movie, you don't need to watch this one... it brings nothing good.

Modern slasher

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 29 October 2020]

The sequel to 2014's The Redwood Massacre finds writer/director David Ryan Keith (Ghosts of Darkness, The Dark Within) returning to the titular Redwood Farm, a place where the owner went insane before killing his family and himself. Now, a stranger has brought together several family members to prove whether or not the burlap-masked killer was real or just an urban legend.

Of course, as things often happen in these movies, the killer is very much real and turns the tables on those looking for him. Where the film makes a real jump for originality is by adding in a conspiracy element, as the hunters find a place where serial killers are born and bred. Then, they're trapped there and forced to battle perhaps more than one maniac (the death of the first movie's final girl at the hands of someone other than The Burlap Killer will give you a clue).

The filmmakers were also smart enough to cast Danielle Harris (Halloween 4, Halloween 5, Hatchet II, Hatchet 3) as one of the leads. I like the idea of a heavily armed group trying to get payback on a killing machine and this surely delivers on the concept.

How is this considered a comedy?

[JCinHB · 3/10 · 31 October 2020]

This is a standard lower budget horror movie. It is not a comedy unless you consider a mediocre plot to be comedy. There are corny parts through out the movie and some medium level scary parts. It had potential, but it just sort of missed the mark. If you have 90 minutes and you feel like a lower budget horror movie, try it out.

Too dumb.

[XpocalypseSurvival · 2/10 · 28 February 2021]

Serial Killer fanboy convinces family members of serial killer's victims to go search for him. What could go wrong?

Decent locations, okay acting, cool mask, not bad setup, but the bulk of the movie consisted of people doing the dumbest things possible. Very little tension, suspense, scares, or surprises for a slasher.

Example: The whole point of the group's mission is to find the lair of the maniac serial killer, and so for protection they bring along a big giant dude with a bag full of guns, and so what do they do when they find what they think is the lair of the psycho serial killer? Send in the whole group with guns? Send in the big guy with his machinegun? Nope! They send in one lady, by herself, with a flashlight. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I get that suspension of disbelief is required for most movies, but this was not only a bit too far, it was also asking to disbelieve the movie's own premise. The rest of the movie is let's-split-up-so-the-maniac-can-kill-us-one-by-one nonsense.

I'm a fan of Danielle Harris, so this was extra disappointing.

Why is everyone American in a Scottish based film???

[beckett-69658 · 1/10 · 5 August 2021]

So, we're in Scotland investigating a Scottish serial killer. But everyone is American. One fella seems to only speak in marine movie clichés, one man looks like my hipster barber, one lass seems to make up the numbers and then we have the lead female who works as exposition for the poorly conceived and executed narrative.

Slow, ponderous and, if possible, even poorer than the first film. Although we at least got some brief sense that these characters had actually met each other before, unlike the first movie.

The only gleaming light in this movie is that my hipster barber seems a fairly decent actor. Why I have to supplement him with expensive beard trims and hair care, I'll never know.

Not understanding these high rated reviews

[OakieRF · 3/10 · 11 March 2022]

So, I guess the high ratings is just because people like Danielle Harris? Me too, in Hatchet and the Halloweens. In this, not so much. Really the script was the issue. The burlap killer looks fantastic. Has a horror franchise look to him. I never saw the original Redwood movie, but we learn the 'team' in this one is haunted by the death of Harris' sister and the others killed so the father and a team of others have been looking for the killer and answers since. Ok, that's fine. Then, thud. For the life of me, can't understand how Harris's character is the 'leader' of the team hunting this killer. She's five feet tall and her only 'qualifications' we see is she does some boxing at the local gym and acts like she's tough. That's all you need, huh? Yet, everyone defers to her like she's the second coming of the Terminator, including her own father, and including some sort of combat vet with a giant bag of weapons who's easily twice her age. WTF? There's suspension of belief required in horror films, but this one was way over the line. Just makes the rest of the movie not work and neither does the fact that all the characters just don't act the way someone normal would based on the situation or what happens just before, whether that's something a person said or an event happens. The team drags along creepy superfan type guy who likes the dads book on the murders and pretty much spends the whole movie holding up a sign that says 'sketchy bad guy who will do something bad really soon'. They decide to investigate a military compound because it's 'one place they didn't search yet' because the dad was caught trespassing there in the past and got 10 days in jail. This is important, because they come up to the fence and the compound and he says something like 'I don't know exactly where it is, don't remember it looking like this, etc.'. Yet, that's the compound. YOU WERE THERE BEFORE AND GOT ARRESTED THERE! Seriously? Who wrote those lines? Lol. Anyway, do they send giant guy with a bajillion guns down into the underground compound to search it and maybe run into the killer who massacred bunches of people? No, five foot tall Harris and a flashlight, BY HERSELF, goes down because she said she was going down alone in a tough voice and ordered the others to stay up. LOL. Wow. Won't ruin the ending but will just say it veers into campy silliness that actually manages to top the poor script writing up to that point. Really too bad the characters were entirely unbelievable and the script was so poor, because the burlap killer really is the best looking potential horror villain I've seen in a long time. Two stars for burlap.

Unexpected Sequel

[Grojniar · 4/10 · 9 July 2021]

I am very surprised this movie got a sequel but I will say I loved that they used a character from the movie prior in the beginning.

Now it's pretty obvious that this is better then the first one; It's produced better, it's darker, the story was more interesting but still not that good and ended up creating more questions that were never answered, but they set themselves up perfectly for another movie so hopefully those questions get answered. Now something odd they did was change the origin story of the killer and even mentioned other attempts at making other killers. With the origin story changed they gave room for fan interpretations which is always fun; Mine is that the legend of the farmer was a planted cover up to mask the project and killers they created.

Redwood Massacre: Annihilation

[a_baron · 5/10 · 27 January 2021]

This film is a big improvement on "The Redwood Massacre", but a heavy cold is a big improvement on influenza; most people would rather have neither. Although it may be considered a sequel or perhaps more accurately a follow-up, it has little in common with the first film apart from the setting. And there was no actual necrophilia in the original. Yes, there are some realistic if depraved special effects; the plot is extremely implausible as our group of ill-fated adventurers are lured or lure themselves to what is thought to be an abandoned RAF base but turns out to be something very different.

The final scene is a contradiction, reverting from horror to what some might consider comedy horror. The big question is, will it make you laugh or cry?

Fun if slightly flawed follow-up

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 7/10 · 31 December 2020]

Several years after the original massacre, a novelist chronicling the original events brings a team together to search for the survivors in the same woods and find themselves lost at a deserted bunker underground holding a berserk rampaging killer created by a military experiment and must get out alive.

This is a pretty decent follow-up effort. One of the better aspects here is the rather strong tie-in that manages to connect the two entries, bridging the events together rather nicely for a pretty cohesive story. From the story of the missing persons from the past, including the characters from the original and trying to look into what happened at that spot in the woods to get the backstory for who everyone in the team is with the trek through the woods getting to the house, this one leads to a pretty impressive setup here. That leads to the other fun part of the film, which is the stalking and slashing. With their discovery in the underground bunker and all the different objects found within here, the unsettling nature of the bunker comes alive quite well with the darkened nature of the building and the growing realization that they've stumbled onto something bigger than they were led to believe. This brings them nicely into the killer's hands with some fantastic kill scenes with the chained-up and tortured victims or out stalking the group throughout the bunker where he finds them. With the action providing some nice brawling and confrontations resulting in plenty of graphic deaths plus the single smartest move to pull off in a genre effort, there's a lot to like here overall. There are some issues to be had here. The first issue to be had is the somewhat overlong build-up that goes through some excruciating character scenes with the team coming together. Featuring the team at odds with the new guy because he's an unknown to their tight-knit friends and all the hiking getting to the spot in the woods they need to be at comes off rather overlong and unnecessary with as much as shown. With the suspenseful yet uneventful explorations of the bunker once they arrive furthering that storyline, the killer doesn't even arrive on-screen until the hour mark which leaves all the usual trappings in a slasher film off-screen for vast majorities of the running time leading to a somewhat bland experience. The other real problem to be had here is the series of twists and turns that take this away from what the series had been in the first installment. That was a simple story of a group of people encountering a local legend about a deranged killer in the middle of the woods and was relenting stalking and killing people one-by-one, which is the complete opposite of this one. We're introduced to military experimentations and underground secrets that come off like an entirely different scenario altogether with the series of revelations given in here which may or may not be appreciated by all. These issues are what drag this one down.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

Why do people keep hiring Danielle Harris?

[greg-29535 · 1/10 · 28 March 2021]

She looks like she's about 4 feet tall and unattractive. Her martial arts scene was hilarious (hilariously bad). Plus she can't act....moving on from her, this a terribly stupid movie with stupid characters. Movies like this always leave me wondering how this crap gets funded...

People are so picky these days

[K_Rad88 · 8/10 · 14 March 2021]

Yes it's a typical horror, but if you love gore and little suspenseful jumpy parts then this is great. The effects were good, the mask the butcher wears is awesome, the acting was fine (not great but Gus was spectacular) It's definitely worth the watch for people who like gory slashers.

Not bad, Could've been better

[arrmeen · 6/10 · 2 March 2021]

This is one of those movies where you have everything , the cast including Danielle Harris and all do a good job but sadly somewhere the script and a tight screenplay let them down. The director does a good job with creating some tension and atmosphere for a slasher, the make up and gore effects are excellent right through , but just something lacked here. I enjoyed the 2015 Redwood Massacre, this is not a direct sequel but has some connection to the previous movie. Don't go with the low ratings on IMDB, Watch it ,but you'll feel .. Oh this could've been much better.

Crap Sequel

[jhmoondance · 2/10 · 9 January 2022]

Well......this was slightly better at 2stars than the redwood massacre. The story was so bizarre n did not fit in with the slasher context. It was a mind-boggling stupid weak story but there was plenty of gore n blood. There was little to none tension n no suspense or much action to speak of.

The acting was atrocious n the characters were unbelievably dim.

The ending was bizarre n diabolical.

I only recommend this movie if you like mindless dumb horror flicks with lots of fake blood.

From extreme bad to utter horrible

[iamdeepujayakumar · 1/10 · 16 October 2022]

This movie is such a vargathe. The first one was itself a garbage and still they decided to make a second one, first movie shows the majeed evil guy as someone who got influenced by some evil entity and this movie show its some experiment, what on earth was the director thinking. The first itself is acheap remake of friday the 13th with haloween bgm, and this is well awfully made in much worse way. The actors are terrible you will actually be happy that the female lead and her entire family killed along with her team.

One thing i dont understand is the first movie takes place in europe somewhere in scotland or england everyone speaks british english,this movies starts there the landscape and all but the place just like that moves into america and everyone has american accent.

Destruction

[kosmasp · 7/10 · 26 August 2022]

No pun intended and maybe the trifecta (word) that is missing from the title. The movie and sequel itself is anything but a destruction. Actually as you can see with my rating I kind of think this is well done. Considering people say that the older you get, the grumpier you get ... maybe I am not there yet. Bare with me - and this slasher movie.

I don't even remember the other movie - which is quite obvious considering the low score I gave it. This one however has way better actors in it, I would argue from the trailer I rewatched from the first, it looks way better too. And the effects are probably a bit more .. at least refined.

You get quite the bloody affair here (again sorry for the pun), but it works in favor of the movie. Unless you have issues and are faint of heart ... probably shouldn't be watching this anyway. The ending is a bit ... well lukewarm I think is what people would call it, but other than that, this works its charm ...

Great movie. Had promise until the ending

[sheliawells825 · 8/10 · 1 April 2021]

I really enjoyed this movie. It had all of the gory blood and action. Danielle Harris was superb. Along with her co actor, but I must say that I did not like the ending at all. I am a huge fan of Danielle Harris and the character actors that she plays, but, the ending was the waste of a perfectly good movie. I would have given the movie a 10 if the ending was right.. Killing the main character really sucked...

Great slasher

[dupontjg-278-481855 · 9/10 · 22 February 2021]

Now that's how a movie should start off! I enjoyed this movie, plenty of slashing, like watching movies from the 80's. Nowadays horror movies are so lame, but this one renewed my faith that there are still some good ones out there.

Really enjoyed it.

[FrankBanis · 9/10 · 24 December 2020]

Beautifully filmed and super fun storyline. Loved Max and that big guy Gary Kasper.

Most Improved Slasher

[selfdestructo · 9/10 · 10 June 2022]

I'm sure I'll be the only 9 on here, you can chalk it up to low expectations if you like, after the dismal, one-note abortion that was The Redwood Massacre. The second I saw Danielle Harris' name, I thought "credibility bit part." I was wrong. She is an asset to this film, has a starring role, and it was a thing of beauty to see her beat the crap out of Max.

I can't say things started well. More of the same carried over from the first movie. And that is, pointless pain and suffering with no context, though it does introduce Max. Who the hell is/was Max? This movie not only keeps you guessing, but I don't think the question is ever answered. Especially in the way he is just disposed of. Is he a superfan? A serial killer groupie? A copycat killer? Redwood's henchman? An actual manufactured/trained Redwood Killer?! (One thing we do learn, in an amusing scene, is he is a necrophiliac!).

Redwood Massacre: Annihilation improves on virtually every aspect of movie making that the first movie failed so miserably at. Shockingly, this sequel (released 6 years after the debut) was made by the same guy! Writer/director, and if you watch the credits, jack-of-all-trades David Ryan Keith. Full marks to that guy, even for just being extra ambitious. I saw improvements in acting, direction, production value, cinematography, character development, score, you name it. This runs nearly an hour and three-quarters, and not all that is devoted to gruesome kills (though there are some good ones here). Annihilation is purposefully paced. As in, they allow you the time to get uncomfortable, linger, and effectively build tension. THEN you get your head chopped off. I even saw a few trope reversals! There's an element of intrigue, especially the more they explore and discover what the hell is going on at the underground military bunker (or is it?).

I, for one, LOVED this ending. Reminded me of George Romero. The very end left room for a sequel, which generally annoys me, but they also left several questions unanswered. So, bring on another one!