The Barrens



Richard Vineyard is a man who has his mind made up. His wife is distancing herself from him. His daughter is almost an adult and is pulling away from him. And his young son has been upset since the family dog disappeared a month ago. So to try to fix this and bring the family closer together, he and the family are going camping in the Pine Barrens, damn it. Just like when he was a kid with his dad. Boy, those were the days. Hiking, fishing, sleeping under the stars, no electronics in sight. It was great.

Except Richard forgot that times change, so when they get to the old campground he and his dad used to frequent, it’s filled with people on their phones and partying. Oh, and a Ranger informs him that some hikers were attacked just the other day. This…is not what Richard wanted for their little outing, and his irritation is growing by the minute. But the rest of the family seems fine with it, so he tries to go with the flow. Or, at least he does until his daughter starts to make nice with that punk guy three tents over, and some teens tell a scary story about the Jersey Devil by the campfire that he doesn’t like. Apparently that normal bit of camping was a bit too much for Richard. So the next morning he makes his family pack up and head even further into the woods, doing their best to sidestep the local sheriff who’s going around trying to find a missing camper.

But things only get worse for the Vineyard family when they come across a mangled tent in the woods and a dead dog chained up nearby. Clearly something is not quite right here. But it’s nighttime now, so they can’t safely go back to the old campsite, and they have no cell reception to call anyone. Plus, Richard has a fever, is acting more squirly by the minute, and keeps bringing up how the Jersey Devil is out to get them. Making the whole family believe that the one person who’s supposed to be protecting them may actually be their greatest threat.


Ah yes, another successful camping trip.

The Barrens is an American psychological horror from 2012 and was written and directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, who may be best known for his work on the Saw series, but has also directed other horror films like Repo! The Genetic Opera and the 2010 remake of Mother’s Day. It also happens to star Stephen Moyer of True Blood fame, and Mia Kirshner, who some may recognize from 24, The L Word, as well as her appearance on a variety of Star Trek series. So already we’ve got some decent clout behind this thing. Which certainly bodes well, because the last Jersey Devil film I watched ended up being a tepid pile of steaming slop. But then again, that film had a big name behind it too, and I’ve just reminded you how THAT went.

Luckily though, this one does end up being quite a bit better than that Cliff Robertson snorefest (not that out doing that film was a hard task to accomplish). But sadly it still manages to be a solidly mediocre outing. Which is actually quite upsetting to me, because there were quite a few things in this movie that I really, REALLY liked. It’s just that those things got critically bogged down by certain plot elements.



I want to preface the rest of this write-up by saying that, generally speaking, I think this movie had a lot going for it. On the technical side almost everything is great. It looks good, it sounds good, and once they get to the woods the film sports an absolutely stellar atmosphere of increasing isolation and dread. I was legitimately surprised by how good the vibe was.

On top of that, beyond a couple of over exaggerated facial expressions, it’s also fairly well acted. Yes, even from the two younger cast members (with only the youngest of the bunch gracing us with a couple of those aforementioned weird looks.)


What even is this face, child?

Hell, the two youngest even had the benefit of playing bearable kids in a horror movie. The younger one does what he’s told, doesn’t freak out and in general seems like a decent little tyke. He generally acts like a normal six-year-old. And the sister is…well, actually she can be a little bitchy. But that’s mostly because she really doesn’t want to go camping, and as a decidedly NON-camping person myself, I can’t say that I blame her for being a little pissy about being dragged into the woods against her will. I probably wouldn’t have acted much better in the same situation. But she did do everything she was told when they got there, and she handled the enfolding crisis remarkably well, all things considered. So I feel most of her earlier brattiness can be forgiven. It really does feel like she was simply trying to do her best given her (increasingly) crappy situation.



The film’s greatest strength AND weakness, however, involves the same element: the story. Because frankly, the film is just a hodgepodge of good ideas book-ended by horrendous set-ups.

The Good?

Richard’s slow descent into Crazy Town is very well done, to the point where it may very well be the best thing about the movie. It starts off with small things that could maybe be initially overlooked, like his standing up too fast and almost passing out, not being able to sleep, or his increasing irritation with the other unwanted campers around him. But all that slowly begins to escalate into more serious things like paranoia, increased aggression and hallucinations, and it quickly becomes apparent that something is very, VERY wrong with Richard. But by the time the others realize what it is, there’s jack-all they can do about it, which makes the whole situation even more scary. Couple that with the effective atmosphere and it easily makes the whole middle part of the film the most engaging part of the movie.



My only complaint about this portion of the film is that it does take a bit to get to this point. You don’t really start seeing the signs that something is really off until you’re around 30 minutes in. Everything up to that point is mostly story set-up, though there are hints about what’s about to come up being dropped along the way, so it’s not like they were just sitting around twiddling their thumbs the whole time. The movie doesn’t start to pick up a bit until a few minutes later, and even then the story still moves at a very non-hurried pace until the last few minutes. So at no point could the film ever be considered brisk.

The other downside is that I also think that they may have dropped the big ‘reveal’ about what’s actually going on with Richard a bit too early. Granted, if you were paying attention you probably already had a pretty good idea of what was really going on, so the revelations shouldn’t be all that surprising to most. But the film still had about 30 minutes left at that point, so I feel like stretching it out may have been more impactful. Or at the very least it would have helped the pacing of the last third of the film a little bit.



The other downside is, while I really enjoyed the whole psychological aspect and the family banding together to combat it despite their own personal obstacles with one another, watching it all unfold often ended up feeling very frustrating, because of all the absolutely horrible decisions people made along the way. And I’m not just talking about one or two things. I mean there were just a litany of questionable choices going on here. One or two I might be able to forgive. But no. It felt almost constant in this film.

First of course we start with Richard dragging his family on an outing none of them want to go on. They were clearly only doing it because of his insistence, as if he thought making the people you love do something they hate is somehow going to bring them closer together. Then they get to the camp and Richard finds out that there was a bear attack a few days earlier. Does he tell his family about this potential danger? No, of course not, because even though he ‘loves his family SO much,’ – a sentiment he often repeats several times throughout the film – he knows that if he told them they’d all want to leave. And he can’t have that, cause that would ruin what HE wants to do. Then he nearly passes out while standing up. He then has a freakout at some other campers that night while they’re roasting marshmallows, and the film seems to be going out of it’s way to make you hate Richard by slowly turning itself into some sort of scary version of National Lampoon’s Camping Weekend.



THEN when he can’t sleep that night he goes for a walk and the paranoia kicks in and he accuses his wife of cheating and breaks her phone AND gets physical with her. And at this point I’d be insisting we go home, cause clearly he’s acting screwy, and all the profusive sweating indicates that he’s getting sick. Sooo…Time to leave! Right? Cause that would be smart at his point. But no, because apparently his wife Cynthia has the patience of a damn saint and really wants him to have this friggin’ camping weekend (Why couldn’t they postpone it? It’s not like the woods aren’t going to still be there later…). Is this trip really worth making yourself sick over?



But the concerning part is that the next day he unilaterally decides they’re going to go deeper into the woods, farther away from all these people and their annoying electronics (and that punk his daughter keeps eying). And they do this even after learning that another camper has mysteriously gone missing. Which is clearly a horrible idea, because – pro-tip boys and girls – if someone is acting violent towards you, you should NEVER go into further isolation with them. That’s a bad idea. And you know, there’s still that dangerous ‘bear’ that’s supposed to be out there. But to hell with the safety of the family, I guess. Further into the wilderness we go!


I love my family SOOOO much I’m willing to put their lives in danger for a hike.

But then it gets much worse, because they come across someone’s campsite. And there’s no one around, and then they find a dead dog tied to a tree. And, yeah, they freak out a bit, but let me tell you, they are not freaking out nearly enough after finding this thing. Because that dog is mummified. And yet nobody is around and the radio is still on. But Richard’s only reaction is to calmly decide to cut the dog loose so he can bury it, and then he simply walks off and dumps it in the river (we have no idea what happened to that dog, so thanks for potentially contaminating the water supply, you douchebag.) You’d think at this point they’d try to call somebody, cause this is all very strange (the daughter still had her phone). But again, no. It’s late after all, so they should just camp here for the night. It is only after they’ve already set up shop that they notice that the front of the other tent is mangled. So NOW they call somebody, right? NAH. Let’s just go to bed and not worry about it til morning. Clearly proving that these idiots have NO common sense and terrible observational skills and should be nowhere near the woods, let alone trying to navigate it.


WTF? How did all of you miss this for so long?!

Sadly that theory seems to hold true for their everyday lives as well, because this is around the point where we find out why Richard has suddenly started acting so damn squirly. And I don’t want to give away the big ‘reveal’ just in case you want to watch it. But let’s just say that there’s a reason why they tell you the family dog went missing, and there’s a reason why his arm hurts and why he has a fever and can’t sleep. And you can tell that poor Cynthia knows immediately what’s happened and how much danger they’re all potentially in (oh sure, NOW you numb-nuts want to call somebody!). But the confounding part about this reveal comes in two parts: 1) How did his wife not know about this giant wound on his shoulder for 2+ weeks? And 2) How TF can Richard, who reportedly went camping with his dad ‘all the time,’ not know about the danger of animal bites? Cause I’m pretty sure that potential danger is part of Camping 101. Hell, I learned about that shit in Elementary school. What’s your excuse, Richy? Whatever it is, I hope it’s good, because either way you’re royally fucked.



And that’s just the stuff involving the characters being stupid. I haven’t even gotten into some of the weird story stuff that pops up. For instance, how did that dog mummify so quickly? Because it should take days for something like that to happen. More appropriately months, in fact. Hell, with all the rain and resulting humidity it shouldn’t have mummified at all and been rotting in some way. But for the sake of argument let’s assume that it was just really dry that summer or something. Yet the radio at the campsite was still playing when they got there. And anyone who’s ever used one of those things knows that even the bestest of modern batteries DO NOT last nearly that long. So…what the hell is going on here? Don’t know, but it’s confusing.


Clearly nobody knows what’s going on in this movie.

Also confusing: How did any of you actually get lost in these woods? I mean, yes, the Jersey Pine Barrens are big (1.1 million acres). But, fun fact, it’s also littered with roads criss-crossing the area. Meaning wherever you are, you can’t go more than a couple of miles without finding a street of some sort. So if you just go in a straight line and stop running around in circles and find a damn street to follow you’ll be fine, you bunch of nitwits.

Oh, and also, WHERE TF DID THAT COUGAR COME FROM?! Those aren’t native to fuckin’ Jersey! They are out West and in flippin’ Florida. What the hell? They kept talking about a damn bear for half the film and when they finally show us an actual animal coming out of the woods it’s that? Really? Did it escape from a circus or something? How did it get there? I don’t know. It’s inclusion is just so freaking RANDOM that I’m still not over it.


So after all that bear talk you couldn’t find a trained bear for your movie, I take it?

Oh! And I haven’t even talked about the monster! It…looks kind of weird, actually. And not necessarily because it looks bad, or even because it doesn’t look accurate. Because for once the monster actually has…oh, I’d say around 90% of the features it’s supposed to have. You know, wings, goat head, hooves. The whole shabang. Hell, they even mostly used practical effects for it too. Meaning there’s a suit and probably some animatronics and all that jazz and the whole creature is not just some weird CGI glob. Though there is a bit of CGI, it’s surprisingly brief and not too bad. So for the most part this Jersey Devil looks pretty decent and canonical to the original descriptions (unlike that hideous boxy thing in 13th Child). It just looks darker and grittier and scarier.



Except that for some reason they gave it a really big, bulky body. Kind of like a bear, which is probably why people keep bringing up bears in this film. So I assume they changed it to try to tie its appearance to the plot, or whatever. The weird part though, is that earlier in the film one of the characters actually describes the Devil accurately as having a ‘kangaroo’ like body. So, something that’s taller and leaner in appearance. So for some reason they changed it from that to…well, bear body, basically. Which isn’t necessarily bad, per say. Just kind of an odd design decision when you’ve already gone to the trouble of accurately describing the creature earlier in the film.


Honestly, even with the CGI wings, considering the time period the film was made, I’m just impressed they graced us with any type of physical effects at all.

Really though I’m….*sigh* I’m really torn on this movie. I think a lot of the dramatic parts were done very well. I even liked that they went to the trouble of designing a monster and shot most of the film in an actual forest (even though it’s somewhere in Canada and not the Pine Barrens). But a lot of the decisions being made (by the adults, not the kids) felt really bonkers to me. Like, it wasn’t just a series, but a parade of Red Flags being thrown at both of them that they blissfully decided to ignore, and the result is that they put two innocent parties in danger to do it. I found it all a bit frustrating to watch.


At least I got to look at some pretty shots of the woods.

So I guess with all that I’d consider The Barrens to be a decidedly mediocre outing. Partially because of all the problems I have with the two main characters, but also because despite being a better Jersey Devil film it’s still not a very good Jersey Devil film. It is, however, a good movie about the dangers of a certain viral infection. So at least there’s that. But it’s still pretty mid-tier. So if you like psychological horror movies and can ignore some questionable character decisions and the fact that the movie doesn’t have all that much monster in it, then feel free to give this one a shot. But if you’re looking for a good movie that’s more focused on the Jersey Devil, then I’m afraid you’re out of luck, because I haven’t actually found one of those quite yet.

The Barrens is available on a variety of streaming services.

The Barrens is also available on DVD and Bluray, both of which apparently include a brief epilogue scene that is not included on any of the streaming platforms I’ve checked.

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