Underrated is not a word I use often. Most of my favorite things are massively popular. Taylor Swift & Tom Petty, Harry Potter & ASOIAF... in terms of films, you might find a lot of cult classics but within their audience they're all regarded as unmitigated classics: Trick ' Treat, The House of the Devil, The Blair Witch Project...
Yet when it comes to Wilderness Survival for Girls, it doesn't receive half the praise it deserves. What a perfect film this is. Three girls go up to the woods to celebrate the end of high school. Smoke, drink, unwind. But things take a dark turn when a stranger barges into their cabin in the middle of the night. Miles away from any civilization, what will they do? But this isn't your typical slasher story, so don't think that's the direction this is going in.
For starters, the woodsy 'cabin in the mountains' feel is beyond sublime, captured with utter perfection. It's guaranteed to always give me flashbacks of vacations in my youth, spent in cabins just like this one. A lot of scary movies try for this kind of setting but Wilderness Survival for Girls does it more effectively and more convincingly. This is partly because the filming is completely real: shot on location in the mountains, at an old cabin with a backstory similar to that of the setting in the film. Truly gorgeous mountain scenery. And this is also partly because the general feel of the cinematography and everything just oozes classic 90s thriller kind of feel. While the film is set in modern day (2004, when the movie was made), it works like a House of the Devil-style period piece. The cabin hadn't been much used in years before the girls arrive, so it still had all its 90s garb intact, and it looks perfectly like the kind of 90s fashion I remember from when I was a kid. That's part of why it resonates so much with me.
But the other part of why it does that, is of course the writing. I won't spoil any plot points for those who've yet to see it, but the dialogue is sincere and the twists are clever. It's a classic cat-and-mouse thriller as well as a bit of an atmospheric horror (with pitch perfection execution of the 'creepy cabin at night' motif in the early portion of the movie), and ultimately it becomes something of a dark coming of age film.
The back of the DVD box describes it as "teensploitation" so I was hesitant to jump in head first... But after viewing the director's commentary, it's clear that a lot of the content and scenarios from the film were inspired by director Kim Roberts' own childhood experiences. Without being precocious, preachy, or overstated, the film manages to ruminate thoughtfully on the culture of fear girls have to grow up with. And the relationships between all four main characters are incredibly real and remind me so much of my friends growing up -- almost embarrassingly, painfully so. It's not Bob Dylan-esque writing that you're going to want to quote but it's true to life and that can be worth a lot more.
Another little plus that makes the movie even better, as if it wasn't already one of my favorite films: it's got an unexpected gay angle with sincere build up and development, which doesn't come off at all as being there just to titillate.
I know I keep saying it, but I can't help it from being true: the movie is just executed perfectly. Movies this picturesque don't come around very often. So why isn't it very popular? Maybe it just never was able to reach the proper audience. It's one of those films that sometimes makes you wonder what market they had in mind... It's too uninhibited for Lifetime but it's not brutal enough for the general horror audience either. It does seem to have been promoted more as a bit of exploitation-genre fun and that was a pretty poor choice, since it lacks both the gore and the sex the genre is popular for. Wilderness Survival for Girls will obviously appeal more to young girls.
It's that perfect type of guilty pleasure for a young teen to stumble on, like the kind of movies I'd find on at 2am when I was 13 or 14. Unrepentant drug use, the foreboding threat of violence, even a little nudity, it's salacious enough to keep you enthralled. But ultimately it's a genuine, honest movie that resonates with the trials of being young without talking down to its audience or throwing a phony moral on top.
Wilderness Survival for Girls is available on Netflix Streaming and Amazon Prime and it comes in at a terse, smooth hour & 19 minutes, so you really have no excuse for not seeing it.
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