Black Forest (2012) by Syfy Channel

Language: English

So as you probably guessed, with it being a Syfy Channel Original Movie, it was pretty bad. Well, it was. It starts out with a man (who was supposed to be German but sounded Scottish…) trying to get random tourist to go on his pagan ritual tour where one could see what it was like for the old pagan worshiping fairies and the like on the equinox. I don’t think he ever asked for money, and gave each person a feather that was their ticket. Uummm hello? Creepy guy wanting to do pagan rituals? Who says he’s a tour guide but doesn’t ask for money? Yes take your baby with you, that makes perfect sense! Anyway, they don’t listen to me screaming at the tv and go along with it anyway. Apparently the megaliths have never been mapped before, as they are OUT IN THE OPEN in Germany (with my background in Anthropology, I can say “yeah right!”). They then get transported to the fairy realm where fairy tales exist and everything wants to kill them.

Half the characters were developed, half of them just down right sucked. Nerdy archaeoastronomer who was made fun of by everyone, especially the banker who was there with his wife, new born child, and the young babysitter he was having an affair with (why the heck would you bring a babysitter you were having an affair with on vacation to Germany???). Those three characters were horrible! But the wife, who seemed to be one-dimensioned, actually turned out okay, and the doctor character, the other Archaeoastronomer, and the woman that has been living in fairy land for years turned out to be okay, with some depth. I don’t want to give away what happens, so I won’t go into too much detail. I will just say that they annoying characters get what’s coming to them.

The tie in with the Grimm Fairy tales was very sloppy to say the least. They had so much potential, but barely scratched the surface and kind of mixed them or twisted the story. It just felt weird and was hard to understand at times. I really wanted to like it because it was supposed to be in Germany and was about fairy tales, but it wasn’t well researched, as if they just read the summary of some tales and decided to do what they wanted with them.

I give the movie 2.5/5, as it wasn’t horrible, but it had a lot of potential that it could have been a pretty good movie if they tried. Half the acting was good, they other half was pretty bad. But once those characters went away, it got a lot better. Try the movie out, if you want. It was fun to laugh at, as now my favorite quote is now “If there’s a goat, there’s a farm”. Seriously, that was a quote. But if you are looking for a movie that will knock your socks off, you should probably skip this movie.