Main cast: Alexandria Payne (Liz), Marvin Ritchie (Shawn), Jason Skeen (Wallace), and Keekee Suki (The Native American)
Director: Isaac Rodriguez
The Astral Woods is marketed as some alien monster in the woods movie, but it’s more of a thriller, although it doesn’t succeed in being that either.
Sure, this is a movie with a minuscule budget, with the names of the people behind the scenes suggesting strongly that this movie is primarily a family venture that has people chipping in to make screenwriter-director Isaac Rodriguez’s magnum opus happen out of love or successfully being guilt-tripped into doing so.
There are fundamental issues in the story that make it stagger out of the gates like a drunk trying to cross a busy highway.
Liz and Shawn are married, and Shawn is broke and, worse, in debt with some people that, shall we say, aren’t the most law abiding sort. He has a plan, however. Liz has life insurance, so all she has to do is to go stay in some cabin in the woods, alone and with no contact except for an occasional call from Shawn (or so he promises). She will have meals delivered to her daily by mysterious folks that will not communicate with her.
She has to do this for seven years or longer, until she is declared dead. Meanwhile, Shawn will continue to live life, this time as a widower, at their old home in a clearly more comfortable manner. Then, when he can cash in on her life insurance policy, he will bring her back. Really!
Seeing that this is the most sensible plan, Liz naturally agrees.
Yeah, this one is really on wobbling ground right from the start.
Seven years pass, and yet, there is no clear passing of time effect. Okay, Shawn grows a bigger beard, but that’s about it. Meanwhile, Liz spends a lot of time being bored, and soon I am just as bored as her.
After what seems like forever, Liz discovers a Walkman (remember those things?) with a cassette in it. She plays it, and lo, soon she is communicating with the voice in the tape like she’s on FaceTime or something. The fellow is apparently a previous resident that is killed by an alien monster lurking in the woods, and somehow he can still linger around and talk in real time to Liz.
Okay, I’ll roll with it because this is actually not the most bewildering developments in this movie, believe it or not. Plus, something is finally happening on screen so I’m all for it.
Still, nothing much else happens that is interesting. There are some occasional jump scares that don’t really deliver much scare, and mostly just Liz talking and listening to the Walkman or just looking around the place with bleary-eyed boredom. I can certainly relate to her in ways that Mr Rodriguez never intended!
In the end, this movie has some seeds of interesting ideas—aliens, time travel Walkman woo-woo, insurance scam—but these ideas never come together in a cohesive manner. Poor Alexandria Payne doesn’t have much to do here despite being clearly the best actor of the tiny cast.
Sure, the execution of movies can be limited by the budget, but here, it seems more like it is made without any properly developed story. The whole thing is a mess, but it’s unfortunately a boring kind of mess that doesn’t offer even a little drop of “so bad, it’s so awesome” entertainment value.
