A cabin-in-the-woods in northern Wisconsin during Christmas
A family consisting of mother, father, daughter and boyfriend take a retreat to a cabin at Lake Alice, Wisconsin, during the Holidays, but the joys of the season take a deadly turn when a mysterious slayer suddenly emerges.
"Lake Alice" (2018) is a modern slasher Indie in the mold of traditional slashers with the tropes thereof, e.g. the silent killer with a mask of some sort. The technical filmmaking is good except for a couple of issues. What works best is the authentic cold winter setting of northern Wisconsin. I like the whole set-up of the family returning to their home town in the rural Great Lakes region and the entertaining drama thereof. Sometimes the director spends a little too much time on a mundane scene, but I felt it established the reality of the situation, so I didn’t mind.
The second half is where some weaknesses rear their heads. I didn’t find the killings very convincing for the most part. For instance, when the first person is fatally attacked I giggled and thought maybe it was a prank. Most of the rest of the assaults have an unreal vibe as well and were okay at best. So the director is good at drama but needs to improve when it comes to staging action/suspense sequences. The micro-budget Indie “The Ridge” (2005) had the opposite problem: The drama of the first half is so weak it tempts the viewer to tune out, but the horrific second half wherein the killer chases the victims is superbly done.
The diff between this and “The Ridge” is that “Lake Alice” features a Whodunit angle. The first half establishes 4-5 possible suspects and the scriptwriter came up with a decent conclusion (as far as whom the killer turns out to be and the details thereof). The director just needs to work out the kinks in the attack sequences.
The movie runs 1 hour, 18 minutes, and was shot at Tomahawk in the Lake Alice region of northern Wisconsin.
GRADE: C
