Wake Wood

Happy Families in Wake Wood.

Dull and unconvincing is probable the best way to describe the UK and Irish co-production from Hammer Films. Wake Wood (2011) directed and written by David Keating, stars Timothy Spall as Arthur, Aidan Gillen as Patrick and Eva Birthistle as his wife Louise. Following the death of their nine year old daughter Alice at the teeth of a vicious dog Patrick, a vet and Louise, a pharmacist relocate to the remote village of Wake Wood. A place where, low and behold, pagan rituals take place which offers the couple the opportunity of three additional days with a resurrected Alice as long as the child has not been deceased for longer than twelve months and that she is not taken outside the confines of the village boundary’s. In return the middle class couple must stay and carry out their professions in the village for as long as they’re capable.

I think it say’s it all when the DVD is released the same month as the theatrical release in the UK cinema’s! The film references The Village (2004), Don’t Look Now (1973) and The Wicker Man (1973) without the substance or probable success of any one of them. This weak and disappointing horror, filmed in County Donegal and Sweden, is the first Hammer film for thirty years and they have since gone on to remake of the Swedish movie Let the Right One In (2008) and renamed it Let Me In (2010).