The opening of Beau Ballinger’s She Watches From the Woods follows most standard horror movie conventions by getting things off with a bang. We join two sisters as they gossip about boys and play with a strange corn husk doll, which seems pleasant enough until one of the girls goes outside, is grabbed by something unseen, and thrown into the river outside their house. It’s an attention grabbing start that really works to hook the audience. From here we follow surviving sister June in a montage of her growing up in and out of institutions, no one believing her claims that her sister was murdered by an unseen force rather than having accidentally drowned.
We next join June (Meredith Garretson) as a recovering adult. Accompanied by her girlfriend Maeve (Paulina Lule), June regularly attends therapy sessions and, to those outside looking in, has made great inroads in her recovery. This hard work crumbles quickly however, after June is called back to the family home to look after her ailing estranged mother. Confronted with the site of her sister’s death, June becomes fixated once more on finding the perpetrator, though June believes this person to be a century old ghost with a history of drowning people in town.
June has been plagued by voices ever since her sister passed and these only intensify upon her return. Ballinger focuses heavily on the audio, filling the soundscape with chilling whispers as the thing June is hunting begins to toy with her. It’s effectively creepy on its own, but it’s the addition of a steady thrum that plays for almost the entire film that replicates June’s own aural nightmare for the viewer.
Directed by Beau Ballinger, She Watches From the Woods is one of the first titles in a new wave of horror films to feature indigenous Americans. Here, the indigenous American is cast into the role of antagonist, although there is a lot to her story that argues for her being in the right. It poses some interesting ideas that are very much needed, as outside of this point of difference, She Watches From the Woods is a fairly standard story of a character returning home to confront past trauma.
Not a film filled with jump scares, nor a particularly scary film overall, She Watches From the Woods presents an exploration of trauma within the framework of the horror film. This move enables its highlighted issues to shine, but those expecting a scary story set in the woods will be disappointed.
She Watches From the Woods
Summary
Although a great attempt at bringing something new to the genre table, She Watches From the Woods occasionally falters, getting trapped within standard tropes and conventions.
She Watches From the Woods was reviewed at Arrow Video FrightFest 2021.
