Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight - By the numbers slasher film (but in Poland!)

'Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight' was marketed at the first Polish slasher film ever made.  I don't know how true that is, but, let's assume that it is a fact, then it is about the only original thing going for this film.  I'll say now, I didn't hate it, but I was hoping for something a little more.

I know there are so many 'original' ways of having a killer stalk and murder a group of teenagers and still make it fresh and entertaining.  This one is about a group of pretty forgettable cliches who have gone to a Polish Summer camp in order to help cure their 'dependency' on mobile phones and the internet in general.  Naturally, they soon fall foul to a foreboding brute or two in the woods who delights in turning the youngsters into human skewers.  Now, if you're thinking that this is effectively the plot of almost every 'Friday 13th' film then you're probably right.

In fact, it's almost like the film-makers took the plot of 'Friday 13th' and followed it beat for beat, only changing the country it's set in.  Considering this film is made roughly forty years later, you'd think that they could have come up with something that, almost kept to the same 'slasher' template, was different enough to least a lasting mark on the audience.  For me at least, it didn't.

Again, I say that I didn't hate it, but it was so absolutely average that there's nothing to either like or hate about it.  There are kills, but they're nothing special, nor at they particularly gory or different to anything you've not seen before in every other slasher film.

Sometimes the film's script tries to be all 'self-referential' and 'meta.' It goes to great lengths to point out the cliches and tropes of horror films.  Then, for some reason, it adheres to every last one of them.

Overall, it's not bad, but it's nothing 90% of horror fans haven't seen before and seen it better.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights

Blood Red Sky - Get these m******ing vampires off the plane!

Netflix films can be pretty hit and miss.  This one starts off in one place and then pretty much the rest of the story is one giant flashback, explaining how a passenger plane has been forced to land on a Scottish military base.  We meet a mother who's travelling with her young son from Germany to America in order to get treatment for a - seemingly incurable - illness.  Unfortunately, things don't go to plan when a group of terrorists (who could well be the 'B-team' for that lot who took over the Nakatomi Plaza in 'Die Hard') and the plane is forced to take more than a few diversions.

However, if the passengers think this was not part of the package holiday they'd booked, the terrorists also get more than their fair share of shocks when one passenger (yes, the apparently 'ill') woman turns out to be a bloodthirsty vampire who won't go down with just a few bullets here and there.  I suppose what follows is a game of 'Die Hard on a plane, but with vampires.' Or should that just be 'Air Force One, but with vampires?' 

It's not a bad little film to watch.  There's plenty of gore in the form of people getting their necks ripped out here and there, but nothing you probably haven't seen before in a million other horror flicks.  The writing is nice and believable for almost all the characters.  Unfortunately, the young boy just seemed to get on my nerves.  I know he was supposed to have been placed in a scary situation and was afraid for his mother's safety and what she was turning into, but he just came across as too wimpy, whiny and generally annoying.

However, don't let just one character put you off.  The rest is pretty solid if you're looking for a little action/horror film which has a nice claustrophobic setting and is already part of your rental package.  I wonder what Samuel L Jackson would have made of these bloodsuckers on his plane.  He would probably actually be grateful he only had to put up with snakes.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that