Redwood Massacre: Annihilation – Review

In 2014 David Ryan Keith unleashed the low-budget Aberdeenshire-based slasher The Redwood Massacre to an unsuspecting public. The film didn’t make much of a stir – this site’s predecessor gave it a very negative review, which attracted some ire from its director. However, the film was obviously profitable enough that, six years later, a sequel is financially viable. I certainly hope that’s the case, anyway, because it’d be a sad thing indeed if savings were blown or a house remortgaged to fund Redwood Massacre: Annihilation.

Redwood Massacre: Annihilation helpfully begins with a subtitle, just like in Pulp Fiction or Dogma, to give us the dictionary definition of (part of) its title. Apparently a “massacre” is a type of mass killing. I’m greatly relieved that this information was given at the start, or I would no doubt have spent the whole runtime wondering what a “mass acre” is. A particularly large acre? But aren’t all acres the same size? Perhaps it’s one of those US/rest-of-the-world weights and measures issues. Say, where is Redwood, anyway? The first film – the one which didn’t go to the trouble of defining “massacre” for us and thus preventing all this trouble six years in advance – had me thinking it was in the Northeast of Scotland. Actually, the review I wrote back then neglected to praise the film for its authentic Aberdeen banter, with lines like “Gonnae get the beers, ye wee whore?” providing extra entertainment value, particularly for a former Aberdeen resident like me. But all of that’s gone here, as every character speaks with the same, baffling accent. I think it’s an attempt at a standard American Midwestern accent, but more often than not it comes out sounding like a Scot’s poor attempt at an English accent. With every character speaking like this, it suggests that perhaps Redwood was in the States all along. Yet the events of the first film are referred to, including photographs of that set of victims, memorably unfortunate eyebrows and all. And it sure didn’t seem like that film took place in the States. Perhaps the definition of “Redwood” would have been more helpful than that of “massacre”.

In any case, our ambiguously-accented heroes are soon off on the trail of the same legendary sack-headed slasher villain from the first film, venturing first into the woods and then into a sort of prison/military bunker, where they sadly spend most of the picture, poorly lit and in very drab-looking rooms. It’s particularly sad because the outdoor cinematography, this time around, is beautiful in places. Every aspect of the film, compared to its predecessor, enjoys a new sheen of consummate professionalism. The cast includes genuine American Danielle Harris, who is something of a minor scream queen and gives a solid performance here, but really everyone in the cast acquits themselves well – you can tell that this time around, they’re real actors and not mates of the director. Sadly, the loss of that amateurish, punk-rock feel means that this sequel lacks even the mild charm that the first had; by being better, it becomes worse. The script, which is certainly more ambitious than that of the original, throws in pickled penises, necrophilia, and a literally last-minute hook for a sequel in a new location (à la Leprechaun or the later Jason movies, where each one had a new setting), yet these don’t come off as hair-raisingly outré inclusions and are somehow just depressing instead. Not even the sense of regional pride that might generate mild interest in the original can save this one, with its Transatlantic accents and dim, unidentifiable locations, and Doric horror fiends are better-advised to seek out Sawney: Flesh of Man, which features such favourite haunts as Tunnels and the Stonehaven beachfront.