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Three out of Five stars
Running time: 95 mins

Entertaining, verging-on-black-comedy horror movie with a suitably bonkers premise, strong performances from the two leads and a good balance of gore and suspense.

What's it all about?
Josh Randall and Brianna Brown play Mike and Sheryl, a young couple on a hiking trip through a state park in rural West Virginia who disregard a ranger's warning and decide to take the Timber Falls trail. Finding a secluded spot, they opt for a spot of outdoor sex and almost immediately run into trouble with three leering moonshine runners, who force Mike to pay an extortionate price for their home-made alcohol in return for leaving them alone.

However, this turns out to be the least of their problems, because the next morning, Sheryl goes missing after an early morning skinny-dip, leading Mike to think that the moonshiners are responsible. He then stumbles into a bear trap (he's not especially bright) and wakes up to find that he and Sheryl have been imprisoned by scary redneck fundamentalists Clyde and Ida (Nick Searcy and Beth Broderick), who are intent on getting them to procreate and give them the child they've always wanted.

The Good
The performances are superb: Josh Randall and Brianna Brown make appealing leads and we desperately hope they'll survive, heightened by the fact that neither of them are well known enough actors for that to be taken for granted. There's also suitably creepy support from both Searcy and Broderick, while Sascha Rosemann provides more obvious scares as the third member of the family, a deformed, sickle-wielding psycho named Deacon.

The Great
Director Tony Giglio gets the balance just right, delivering suspense and gore without going over the top into torture-porn territory. The script contains some neat reversals (such as Mike going after the moonshiners) and is also laced with moments of jet-black humour, such as torture-happy Clyde's horrified reaction to the notion of abortion.

Worth seeing?
Timber Falls is an entertaining horror flick with a sharply written script, strong performances and a decent mix of suspense, gore and jet-black humour. Worth seeing.