So the film cuts to a group of attractive (in a French way) young people riding in a car. It seems that they’re a troupe of actors hired to perform at a birthday party. There are 3 women: Sophie, Jeanne and Matilde. Jeanne & Matilde are very striking but I thought Sophie sorta looked like Celine Dion. The 2 guys are Matthew & Frederick, I warn you now if you look this film up on imdb; it lists the original French character names. Frederick is a good-looking blonde guy, sort of in the Brad Rowe vein, while Matthew is like a better-looking Screech.

The huge house is set in the middle of the woods and they’re greeted by the grounds-keeper, this really weird looking guy named Stephan. It’s pretty obvious Stephan is a bit of a red herring, unless you don’t watch a lot of horror movies. You know, he’s unattractive, short, and spends much of his off-time practicing taxidermy. (Too obvious.) They go to the house where after a while; the owner, Axel, greets them. He’s hired them to perform for his young nephew’s birthday.

We get to see them settle in and it turns out that two of the girls are lovers, Matthew & Matilde are hooked up while Frederick is being heavily lusted after by Axel (who insists on calling him ‘Cedric’) The Celine lookalike strips naked and starts making out with her girlfriend while someone is snapping photos of them. Later they come down and perform THE cheesiest version of Little Red Riding Hood I’ve ever seen!

The nephew, Nicholas is a very strange kid. He seems to be autistic and bears more than passing resemblance to the groundskeeper-must’ve been their lookalike Gulag haircuts. He looks really creepy with his wide-eyed stare then at dinner, he stabs himself in the hand with his own fork! This takes place in the first 30 minutes of the movie-like I said, a promising start but then something goes wrong.

Sophie wakes up reaching for her girlfriend but she’s alone, she goes downstairs to find the rest of her friends having a strange little party-Matilde & Matthew are dancing badly while Jeanne and Frederick look like they’re performing the actor’s exercise of mirroring each other’s movements albeit very sensually. I think they’re smoking joints too which might explain the bad dancing (I hope).

They’re soon interrupted by this really odd policeman who tells them of a serial rapist being sought in the woods. So what does this merry band of young people do? THEY GO OUT INTO THE WOODS, OF COURSE! It’s late; it’s dark what else to do? So they go out and almost right away, THEY SPLIT UP! Of course this turns out to be a ruse of Frederick’s since he and Jeanne get naked to have sex leaning against a tree! Was it wrong for me to hope a spear came out of nowhere and impaled them?

Matilde & Matthew are walking but somewhere down the line, HE disappears too. Matilde, no dummy she, heads right back to the house where Sophie is waiting. She asks where Jeanne is but Matilde has no idea and goes to take a shower. This scene was interesting as we see her vaguely through all the mist in the bathroom-geez, just how HOT was that water? It looked like a foggy day in London town when she was through. I guess it was just an excuse to see her naked longer. She walks for a while (it must’ve been a HUGE bathroom!) then finds the sink & mirror where she wipes the mist off the mirror to see someone dressed as the Big Bad Wolf behind her. Bang! He pushes her face into the mirror then drowns her in the sink. What a cool scene!

One by one, the group returns to the house-first Jeanne, then Frederick then Matthew who gives Jeanne & Fred knowing looks like he’d seen them against that tree. Matthew goes upstairs to see Matilde but finds a blood spattered bathroom; they go to Axel’s room but all they find is a small pool of blood in his bed. They want to leave but Matthew doesn’t want to leave Matilde behind plus there’s the little fact they haven’t paid!

There were strange cuts in this film-in one scene, they’re arguing about leaving then you see Nicholas in the hallway staring at them. Then all of a sudden, they’re trying the phone (which of course doesn’t work) and Frederick has this REALLY cheesy glower on his face! Just what he was looking angry about I have NO idea. After Sophie discovering the phone doesn’t work-it RINGS!

Okay, if I say anymore, it’ll totally spoil the movie. I will say it’s a beautiful looking film, with attractive actors but it doesn’t work as an effective horror movie. There were murders that were pretty elaborate with good-looking FX but the killer was odd, not scary. I’ll give them this-it kept me guessing just who that kid was supposed to be but the payoff wasn’t very good and neither was the ending.