If we’re not going to take climate change and deforestation seriously for the sake of our children, then let's do it for the horror films. Hollywood has a fine tradition of sending teenagers and twenty-somethings into the woods to be murdered by rednecks, and no forest, no backwoods slasher. So while James Kondelik’s PItfall is a big too forgettable to make the poster child for environmentalism, it’s still a welcome reminder that this formula is really, really hard to fuck up.
Since the tragic death of their parents, Scott (Marshall Williams) and Ashley (Alexandra Essoe) are struggling to find their way back to each other. At the insistence of their significant others, Scott and Ashley head off into the woods for a long weekend of camping and forgiveness. Even the presence of Lars (Richard Harmon, a welcome addition to any horror movie), their sardonic childhood friend, isn’t enough to derail their plans. If Scott and Ashley can just find the courage to open up with each other, maybe everything will be OK.
It’s a nice idea, but it’s not one shared by a mysterious woodland hunter (former UFC fighter Randy Couture), who stalks the trails in search of victims. Traumatized by a violent childhood, the hunter makes an art of cruelty, peppering the ground with pitfalls – we have a title – and stalking campers who are unlucky enough to cross his path.
So when Scott slips and falls into a pit, impaling his leg on one of the spikes, the hunter sees this as an opportunity to punish the rest of the group. As the hunter chases two groups of survivors – Scott’s friends and a pair of college hikers who are the last surviving members of their group – Scott must work to free himself from the pit or risk watching more loved one die without being able to do anything to prevent it.
As the film breaks off into two major threads – one following Ashley and the rest of the group, the other sticking with Scott as he dips into a fever-driven madness – things get a little weird. Scott begins to see double, imagining his own manic doppelgänger sitting across from him in the dirt. This second Scott won’t let him forget about the death of his parents, and his double’s gibbering insults add a strange dash of Army of Darkness to Scott’s ravings..
Because of scenes like this, we’re never quite sure how seriously to take anything in Pitfall. Kondelik, who co-wrote and directed the film, is best known as one-half of the Kondelik Brothers, the duo behind The Asylum features Airplane vs. Volcano and Arctic Apocalypse. Pitfall does sit a cut above the quality of those movies; while the premise would seem to nod to single-location survival horror movies like Fall, Kondelik’s movie is much more in the vein of the Wrong Turn franchise, with campers being hunted by a backwoods monster.
It’s an unsteady marriage of high and low concepts. It’s also a premise that can weather a little unevenness. Sure, there’s a lot in Pitfall that never quite works. Kondelik splits his action a few too many ways; there’s also the special effects, which prove, well, you can take the director out of The Asylum but you can’t take The Asylum out of the director. While all of this lowers the film’s ceiling, Pitfall still hits the mark with most of the action sequences, selling us on the country-versus-city stereotypes at the heart of everyone backcountry slasher.
Think of everything you would want from a movie like this. Practical traps in the forest that spring out to mutilate campers? You got it. Arrows whistling through the woods to plunge deep into a character’s head? Of course. Bear traps shattering legs and breaking bones? Kondelik wouldn’t dream of making a movie without it. Pitfall checks all the boxes, and while it may fall short of something quality, it’s sometimes just enough for a movie like this to play the hits.
With a runtime of nearly two hours, there’s no denying that Pitfall wildly overstays its welcome. But there are little flourishes throughout the film that will endear it to anyone raised on 2000s direct-to-video slashers. And with the stunt casting of Couture as the hooded killer, the film may sustain itself on a strange crossover audience between UFC and B-movie fans. If it had been released a dozen years ago, Pitfall is the kind of low-budget horror that would’ve spawned a dozen even cheaper sequels. Kondelik and company would've cleaned the hell up if Redbox was still a thing. [2.5/5]
Pitfall is now playing at the Chattanooga Film Festival.
