Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: James Kondelik
Starring: Richard Harmon, Alexandra Essoe, Randy Couture, Marshall Williams, Jordan Claire Robbins, Matt Hamilton
Director James Kondelik's Pitfall mashes up the survival thriller with the slasher movie. The result is a film that plays like scenes from 127 Hours have been awkwardly edited into a Friday the 13th sequel. There is a protagonist stuck in a precarious position from which escape seems inevitable, and there is also a lumbering madman lopping off heads. It's a formula that might pay dividends in a film more focussed than Pitfall.
In classic slasher fashion we open with a prologue that outlines the villain's origin story. We're then introduced to the obligatory traumatic backstory. In a flashback we see how thirtysomething siblings Ashley (Alexandra Essoe) and Scott (Marshall Williams) lose their parents in a car accident, though the full details are gradually revealed throughout the course of the movie. In the present, Ashley and Scott have become estranged thanks to their differing ways of coping with the tragedy. Ashley plunged into alcoholism and has just recently gotten sober, while Scott has decided to shut it out of his mind completely.
A tense reunion comes when Scott and his girlfriend Gwen (Jordan Claire Robbins) invite Ashley and her himbo friend-with-benefits-who-would-like-to-be-more Charlie (Matt Hamilton) on a hike in some remote woods. The two couples are joined by stunted slacker Lars (Richard Harmon), who doesn't remotely seem like someone who would be friends with this straight-edged bunch.
Little do the hikers know that they've invaded the territory of a psychotic woodsman (Randy Couture) who happens to already be in the middle of massacring another group of tourists. The woodsman has littered the forest with pitfalls, deep traps with nasty spears at their base to impale his prey. Chased by a pack of wolves in the middle of the night, Scott falls into one such trap and ends up with a spear through his leg. Can his friends find him before the woodsman has his wicked way?
One look at Pitfall's close to two hour run time and alarm bells will start ringing. This is an exploitation movie that isn't content to be an exploitation movie. The tedious TRAUMA does nothing but slow down what should be a tense and immediate thriller, with Ashley and Scott constantly blubbing about the loss of their parents. Maybe I'm cold-hearted, but it's not like Ashley and Scott lost their mum and dad when they were kids. They're full grown adults and their parents appeared to have been in their seventies at the time of their demise. I've lost both my parents and I certainly miss them, but I don't think I'd give them a second thought if I was busy trying not to get my head chopped off by a maniacal Bear Grylls.
When the gory action finally arrives, it does at least deliver, with some nice nasty bloodletting to sate the appetites of gorehounds. But it's impossible to buy many of the woodsman's improbable actions, especially those that occur offscreen. He's just a regular bloke who spent too much time in the woods, but he pulls off feats that would require supernatural strength. He struggles in a hand to hand duel with the wiry Lars, so how does he manage to kill an entire pack of wolves with his bare hands? There's nothing that makes the woodsman stand out as a slasher villain, but you'll probably end up rooting for him just so you don't have to endure another word about Ashley and Scott's bloody trauma.
Pitfall is on UK/ROI VOD now and on bluray/DVD from July 20th.
