Dedication to the cause has led me to 2005’s “Camp Blood 3: Within the woods” I figure if i’m going to cover all the ‘Camp Blood’ movies then i’m going to make damn sure I do a proper job of it, because the last thing I want to happen is I miss one and have to go back. This is very much a one way trip and I’m not stopping to use the restrooms thank you very much.

Camp Blood 3: Within the Woods, sometimes just known as “Within the woods” is the closing part of Brad Sykes ‘Camp Blood Trilogy’. And there seems to be a bit of confusion online as to the relevance of this film within the Camp blood universe as…well, there’s two “Camp Blood 3’s” and bizarrely the more “Official” release (I.E the one that actually has the creator tied to it) is widely considered to be an “Unofficial” release, while the technically more “Unofficial” release (the one set years after the first two films with only the producer/distribution company associated with it) is in fact treated as legitimate. There isn’t that much information online as to exactly why, but I have my own speculations. Please do bear in mind however that this is just my own thoughts on what I *Think* is the situation and DEFINITELY not 100% confirmed to be the actual case. I’m just going on what I think makes sense from where I’m sitting.

So “Within the woods” is absolutely a ‘Camp Blood’ sequel. The film is set at ‘Camp Blood’ there’s a killer clown, and the first 2 films get referenced in detail with this film going one step further than just name dropping. Introducing a bridging narrative that directly connects these films all together. Frankly it couldn’t BE a ‘Camp Blood’ movie any harder if it tried short of them getting what was left of the original cast together for one final outing.

What I *THINK* happened is that David Sterling of Sterling entertainment produced the first two Camp Blood movies and helped distribute them. Brad decided in 2005 that he wanted to make another instalment in the Camp Blood series as he previously wrote and produced the first two, and it was on finishing production that problems arose…either Brad had planned for David to distribute this movie and David wasn’t interested or Brad doesnt own the IP to the ‘Camp Blood’ franchise anymore, David does. I personally believe one of these two to be the case because, long story short Brad couldn’t call this film “Camp Blood 3: Within the Woods” it had to just be “Within the woods” and as far as I can see it’s only seen the light of day as part of a trilogy pack of the ‘Camp Blood’ movies sold through Brads own website for a VERY short period of time.

Since then the movies been missed off every single “Sterling” release, with the “official” lineage jumping straight from 2005 to 2014 for THEIR “Camp Blood 3”…is any of the above true? I have no idea, but that’s what my guts telling me is the case and if anyone in the comments knows what REALLY went down please do let me know and I’ll add a note into the description setting the record straight.

In either case, its resulted in a Camp Blood movie thats written and directed by Brad, set in the Camp Blood universe that directly references the events of the first 2 films and even bridges the gap in terms of what’s happened at Camp blood between 2001 and 2005…and almost no ones seen it and it’s widely considered the bastard child of the franchise. Which to me is just…nuts. That would be like if Wes Craven had directed and written a “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie that, because it wasn’t put out by New Line, everyone just pretended it didn’t exist…

Not that “Within the woods” is particularly earth shattering in the grand scheme of things, but in the world of Brad Sykes movies, it’s a revelation! The film picks up 5 years after the events of “Camp Blood 2” and over the past 5 years various mysterious disappearances and murders have continued to plague the woodland/desert area of Camp Blackwood. In fact it’s status as a “spOoOoOoOoOoky” hotspot has attracted the attention of television exec Tony Mercer, who’s got a ratings winning idea on his hands assuming he can pull in the right volunteers.

Y’see What Tony has in mind is “The Camp Blood Challenge”, he’s auditioned 5 volunteers to spend 24 hours on the grounds of Camp Blackwood, if they can make it through the 24 hours then a jackpot prize of 1 million dollars will be split amongst the “Survivors”. If they leave the grounds, they get nothing. Of course, Tony fully intends for no one to get the money and has rigged the setup thoroughly. He’s left his P.A ingrid in charge of greeting the new contestants and making them feel a bit “spooked” about the situation, Cameras are placed in strategic positions around the perimeter of the woods as well as in “camp” areas within the woods and he’s hired a performer by the name of Griff to dress up as a killer clown and using a rubber knife and some fake blood, scare the contestants out of the woods as effectively as possible.

It all seems pretty faultless…except for one problem, there’s a REAL killer clown at Camp Blackwood. And no sooner that Tony has gotten into his car and left Ingrid and Griff to greet the contestants, then the REAL killer clown appears, murders Ingrid AND Griff, leaving the contestants to arrive and be effectively abandoned at random points across the trail. The first contestant we’re introduced to (and our main character for this feature) is Jessica, she’s an elementary school teacher and as luck would have it, she’s medicated (That plot point is brought up repeatedly, but you better BELIEVE it LITERALLY doesn’t feed into the actual plot at any point) Anyway, Jess is abandoned by the roadside, and heads into the woods to try and find the other contestants or at least find a rendezvous spot.

It doesn’t take long for her to get jumpscared by Fellow contestant and gym bro Russ, who introduces himself and tells Jess that she’s contestant number 4 and that he’s already helped establish a base camp with 2 other contestants. The pair head over and Jess is introduced to literal slab of nothingness Nolan. And I’m not kidding with that, at first as he seemed to be really into smoking I thought he might be our “comedy stoner” for the movie. But he isn’t, then they reveal he knows a lot about the history of Camp Blackwood, so I assumed he’d be our “tin foil hat” conspiracy theorist or our knock off “randy” from scream of the movie…but again…nope! He just seems to basically be a character purely designed to say lines that no other character could get away with saying and to act as a mechanism for some of the later parts of the movie.

So there’s him…and then there’s Cat, who’s a singer attempting to break into the industry and a fame chaser who’ll do anything to try and climb the social ladder. She’s a bit ditzy but mostly harmless. Its at this point that Tony, using a two way speaker system, speaks to the contestants and explains the rules of “The Camp Blood Challenge” bizarrely the group are confused and startled when they spot cameras hidden in the trees…like…what did they think this was going to be a radio play or something? I have no idea…either way, with the rules explained the countdown begins! And our team begin to wonder about the 5th contestant who has yet to materialise.

The gang decide to split into pairs with Jess and Nolan breaking off and having a bit of a heart to heart to get to know each other better where they get jumpscared by a mysterious woman who turns out to be the 5th contestant Mel, while Russ and Cat wander into the woods to scout out the area where they find a small sack filled with file photos of the 5 contestants, the photos however are covered in blood…they assume it’s fake blood but they’re still somewhat concerned, so they head back to the main camp and things start getting a little flirtatious between Russ and Cat, especially when Russ mentions he’s a personal trainer to the stars, the pair are about to kiss when Jess, Mel and Nolan return and mercifully break up the display.

After establishing everything AGAIN it’s then revealed that the show has only provided 2 tents. Russ and Cat claim one and Mel claims a tent for her and Jess…leaving Nolan to sleep out by the fire. Anyway, time moves on, it’s nighttime and in a scene that i’m sure at this point will trigger the PTSD of anyone who’s been following these films with me up to this point, while everyones sat around the campfire, Nolan IN DEPTH recounts the FULL plots of “Camp Blood”, “Camp Blood 2” AND adds on an extra part to the tale where he explains what happened to Tricia after the events of “Camp Blood 2” AND talks about a couple of the murders/disappearances that have happened in between that film and this one. Including a belgian photographer and his model going missing and a homophobic arsehole and his girlfriend getting stabbed. It’s not exactly twin peaks…but hey…this is the 3rd time we’ve done the “Let’s explain the entire franchise around the campfire” sequence…at least they BOTHERED to add a bit extra on.

Anyway; after all of this is rattled out, Russ tells Nolan to wind it down as he thinks he’s just trying to spook everyone into leaving so he can claim the million for himself. With that, everyone goes to bed. well…I say that. Jess and Mel have an elongated conversation about Mels hunting knife, and Russ and Cat get down to a little “Bouncy Bouncy”. Tony throughout all of this has been monitoring them through the cameras, but he’s begun to notice that sometimes, some of the cameras randomly stop working for a spell…in either case he catches Russ and Cat and sees this as a definite ratings boost. Once the rutting is done and dusted, some time passes and Nolan is awoken by strange noises in the woods. He goes to investigate and IMMEDIATELY gets “Clowned”…

The next day, Jess wakes up and walks straight into a large puddle of Nolans blood. She goes to wake up Russ and Cat and at first they’re super dismissive, but Russ decides to go and investigate…he doesn’t find anything though and while briefly stopping for a piss, he notices something dripping on him..it’s blood, Nolans blood…coming from Nolans actual corpse that’s been left in a tree. Russ freaks out and almost immediately bumps into Mel who’s brandishing a knife. He immediately accuses Mel of murdering Nolan and tries to Attack Mel, she retaliates and Russ gets his arm cut. He runs off convinced now that Mel is DEFINITELY the killer.

While all this is going on Jess and Cat hear Russ’s screams and Cat randomly runs off to try and find him…Jess chases after her and finds her dead at the bottom of a cliff, she then almost immediately bumps into the the clown killer. And basically…what follows is…well…lets just say if you’ve seen Camp Blood or Camp Blood 2…you’ll know EXACTLY how this thing ends…In an hour and 17 minute long movie that’s basically just the best bits of the first two movies slammed together but shot nicer, Will Jess survive the clown killer? Will Tony get his emmy!? and…Is there anyone out there who actually believes Mel is the killer? Ahh well…if you’ve not seen any of the other Camp Blood movies and you LITERALLY have nothing else to do, then you may actually enjoy “Camp Blood 3: Within the Woods”

They say that Madness is repeating the same experiment in the same conditions over and over again expecting different results. Well Brads tried to make “Camp Blood” 3 times now…and while this newest version is a HELL of a lot better in terms of technical quality and ability, it’s still SUPER problematic in a lot of places as well. So…the script for this thing is essentially all the best bits of “Camp Blood” 1 and 2 basically mashed up and stuck together to form this meat patty of a movie. The only “new” element at play with this entry is the “reality tv” angle. And my first thought when I revved this up for its initial watch when I saw that reality TV was going to be the main thrust of the feature was “Ahh! Brad Watched ‘Halloween Resurrection’ at some point in the last couple of years!” because that’s basically what this is.

It’s a camp blood movie but with the monitoring scenes from Halloween Resurrection stapled onto it. That’s not strictly terrible I should add, if anything I was grateful that in this entry he was actually TRYING to do something a bit different. But it also isn’t anything groundbreaking and did leave me just kind of apathetic to the whole thing. What I will say is the 5 years between movies has been a sharp learning curve, Brad had involvement with 14 mainstream features between Camp Blood 2 and this entry and it absolutely shows in the script, which is tighter, has a cleaner 3 act structure than previous entries and is (for the most part) pretty coherent…barring a couple of moments where you have to mildly suspend your disbelief on the characters intelligence levels and the ending which I will get to in a minute.

The characters in this are all largely archetypal horror tropes, you’ve got the jock, the prep, the quiet nerdy kid whos a bit *too* clued up on what’s going on and the final girl. It’s all there, but at least these characters HAVE character, at least they’re defined enough that I could identify what they’re trying to be! Well…except Nolan who doesn’t really seem to get much of anything resembling a character…but hey ho…barring the occasional moment where the script knocks a digit off the cast’s IQ in order to preserve the narrative I enjoyed these characters I thought they were decent enough for what this thing is.

Beyond this however the cracks do begin to show a bit, the quality of the dialogue is improved over the first two entries, but only marginally, we’ve graduated from “low budget Porn dialogue” to something resembling “Not terrible”…that doesnt mean its by any stretch GOOD. It just means that I didn’t want to wail in pain every 20 minutes at how awful the lines were. They’re still SUPER awkward and dry though, and while the cast are improved, they’re still not great on delivery (but again, more on that later)

The BIGGEST gripe I have with the film (and spoilers from here on in, so skip ahead to the next chapter if you don’t want to know who the killer is) but the ending of this thing is…well there’s no other word for it. It’s bollocks. Its absolute aneurysm inducing bollocks. And that’s not hyperbole either. So, at the end of the film Jess is the lone survivor, Tony leaves the broadcast room and goes to rescue her from the clown killer and the pair head back to the broadcast room because Tony wants to wipe the tapes and wants Jess to promise to not say a word in exchange for the prize money.

They get to the broadcast room and Tony begins wiping the tapes, but after only a few minutes of being there, the clown killer turns up and butchers Tony. They then go to attack Jess but accidentally catch a power cable and end up getting fried alive. Jess removes the clown killer’s mask and reveals that the killer is none other, than CAT!? Cat says she decided to kill because she figured she could never become famous by just being a singer…she needed to be a singer + extra and if killing some people made her infamous and got her music career to launch. So be it. With the final moments of the film revealing Cat died from the electrocution, but shock jock stations are now playing her music to be edgy, and that Jess collected her winnings, globally released Cats music and began a career in law.

Now. now now now…this is bollocks. ABSOLUTE BOLLOCKS. There’s not one element of this 3rd act finale that I enjoyed or got on with. So…in no particular order…let’s break this down shall we? First up, Tony had a hell of a drive to get from the broadcasting room to pick up Jess, and I know he gives her vague directions on where to head, but A: how did Jess know which way to go when she’s never been there before and she has NO navigation tools to KNOW which direction she’s even heading in, and B: How did Tony know EXACTLY where Jess would be in time to perfectly scoop her up to avoid the killer clown. Second, HOW did the killer clown almost match the speed of a speeding car. I’m not kidding Tony and Jess get back to the broadcast station and chill for collectively no more than 5-10 minutes. Let’s be generous and say their car was doing 40mph. At this point our clown killer has been beaten up and stabbed in the head with a knife. They have NO way of knowing where the broadcast room is, they have NO idea of what direction to head in, and unless they can run consistently at 30+ miles an hour it would have taken them WAY longer than 5-10 minutes to catch back up to the vehicle. Letalone get to into the broadcast room. And even assuming our killer had buns of steel and COULD somehow run at top speed consistently. They’d be totally shagged out by the time they got IN to the building, let alone have enough energy to keep on butchering.

This is of course glossing over all the minor continuity issues like, what does Tony think is going to happen when he goes back to the network after this weekends played out only to explain that all the contestants just “didn’t turn up”, that the tapes wernt used and that his PA and the technician he took with him have vanished too. At best he’d be on the line for wasting company money (and probably on the line for some kind of fraud charge) at worst, they’re going to find out about the murders and because he wiped the tapes, he won’t have a leg to stand on. He’ll be going to jail.

But the worst…THE WORST. Crime this film commits is making Cat the killer. Apart from the fact that doing that makes literally no sense from a character perspective. WE ACTUALLY SAW Cat die. She’s dead! And before anyone says “Oh she might have faked her death” HOW!? There’s literally a scene in which Jess looks down at Cat’s broken and dead body, before turning around and LITERALLY bumping into the clown killer. HOW was she able to get seven shades kicked out of her by Griff and stabbed in the head by Mel and STILL be perfectly intact and, if anything, stronger and better equipped to deal with these situations than when she WASN’T wearing the clown mask? This was the moment the film absolutely nuked itself for me. Like. I was on board with it up to this point, I didn’t think it was anything spectacular, but had it stuck the landing The tone of this review would have been out and out surprise and a VERY loose recommendation to maybe check it out. But the BOLLOCKS this film pulls in the ending…I have no words…the total loss of any kind of actual resolution too only went to dampen things further for me. It’s established Jess made enough money to go to college to study law, and that Cats music ended up on the radio…but that doesn’t really answer anything about what happened to the reality show elements, were there two killer clowns in the woods? Did cat spend 5 years murdering people and just HAPPENED across this reality show on her down time? How did the shock jocks get her music?

It’s just such a messy, incoherent and downright stupid ending that my estimations plummeted HARD on this thing. By the time the credits rolled I’d pretty much decided that despite its improvements, this was no better than the other two movies for that BOLLOCKS ending.

Once again we see Brad Sykes returning to write and direct. And not a lots changed in Brad’s world since we covered ‘Camp Blood 2’ his last feature credit appears to have been in 2022 for a movie called Hi-Fear I believe he directed it and wrote a segment for it. But…outside of that all’s been quiet on the sykes front. What I will say is, having seen this later entry now, it has got me curious to explore some of the films he made between 2001 and 2004…I want to see how he developed as a filmmaker because honestly, the direction here has come along in leaps and bounds!

It’s clear that the films that he’s written and worked on between “Camp Blood 2” and this have enabled him to really learn and hone the craft as we’ve gone from shakey and washed out elongated sequences that felt frankly unprofessional to something that’s pretty sharp looking, follows traditional film rules and guidance for the most part and actually feels like someones behind the scenes who understands how to corral and manage all the aspects of a production.

Now; like I say, it’s not perfect. While it’s absolutely a step up from the previous instalment, it’s still rather flat and generic visually for a movie of this genre. There are some nice attempts to work with the cam ops on some experimentation, but it misses more than it hits unfortunately and most attempts at stylisation just come across as a bit half hearted. If you knew this was a Brad Sykes film and had seen the other camp blood movies, I don’t think you’d have much trouble recognising Brad’s tone and style, but I feel it’s much more muted here than in previous attempts. The distinction is lost in exchange for a much more robust and solid production that, while MORE than welcome did leave me feeling like I’d just watched a fairly generic slasher.

Direction of the cast doesn’t fare much better. Again, in terms of comparison to previous entries there is a definite improvement in terms of the cast actually utilising location space a bit better. There’s better use of props and better understanding of cast placement within the frame to maximise the effect of the picture. But, there’s still a lot of just standing around and spewing dialogue, there’s still a bit of a lack in physical presence within the cast and there were times where I felt like they all just needed a bit more of a push to physically get their presence out onto the screen. Like I say, on the whole, there’s definite improvement, but there’s still a way to go.

On the cine front? Much like the direction, there’s an absolute improvement here in terms of the quality and output. Composition within the frame is a lot tighter, the swap from an analogue to a digital video format has rendered this film a LOT more colourful, vibrant and less green than previous entries. and sequences are constructed to be focussed, to the point and engaging. Again though, it’s not without it’s faults. While the composition is MUCH more in line with industry standards, the trade off is, once again everything just kind of feels a bit flat and generic, there’s experimentation attempted in shots such as tracks, swooshes and pans, but they never quite land as well as I feel they could have and we even get the occasional return of the “3D conversion kit creeping into the shot” style issues that plagued the first 2 films, only here it’s “lens” creep or boom mics dropping into the shot. Which is a real shame.

They do have a couple of attempts at moody lighting and it kind of works, but it feels like stylisation for stylisations sake rather than it being there with meaningful purpose, and the lack of any kind of lighting stylisation outside of the broadcast room sequences again, just leaves the film feeling a bit like a patchwork of half hashed out ideas and plans.

Performance wise, again; it’s improved! Not by much! But we’re no longer dealing with low budget porn style acting. Now it’s just “not particularly great” acting. It’s still a bit of a poor show honestly with Stephanie Mathis probably bringing the best out of the film as Jessica. She’s not exactly excellent, but she leads the film pretty effectively and is probably the joint best performance this franchise has seen to date, she’s fairly animated, gives a performance that doesn’t feel like it’s the first time she’s ever been on camera…she’s fine. I wouldn’t go as far as great. But it’s a step in the right direction.

Credit also has to go to David Sobel as Tony, he plays the part of an uppity arse entirely believably and *Would* have been the best performance this franchise had seen, had it not been for the fact that he’s just not really actively in the film all that much! They cut back to him periodically chilling in the broadcast room eating jelly beans, but he really lacks those decent moments to really well and truly take the role to the next level. It really wouldn’t have taken much to get him there and had he had active involvement in this movie even just 10% more than he currently does, he’d have hands down been the out and out best performer in this thing. Because his role is distinctly curbed however, it almost feels like he’s been hindered by the script. Which is a real shame.

The rest of the cast are fairly middling. Phil Lander as Russ is okay as a jock who punches first and thinks later…but I don’t feel conviction in his delivery to be honest and he just comes across as a bit bland. Erin Holt as Kat is fine enough, she’s supposed to be playing an annoying “Influencer” type trying to break into the industry and I think she does a fine enough job…I just wish they’d given her a better ending than the one we ended up with honestly, and Adam Van Conant as Nolan, as mentioned draws the short straw, not exactly delivering a BAD performance, but just..really being let down by a script that simply has NO idea what to do with him…had they picked a lane, it could have been a different story…but. Adam can only work with what he’s got unfortunately.

And finally; the soundtrack! And we’ve evolved from low budget, low quality sounding synth pieces. To generic as balls sounding horror and suspense stock music. It’s higher quality, it’s used to actually punctuate key points in the film rather than just being slapped on whenever the editor remembered music needed to be playing. But err…yeh…it’s not the greatest scoring i’ve heard in the world…I mean…it’ll do…but I just feel it could have been so much more.

What DID wind me up was the quality of the cast audio recordings…so for most of the hour and 17 minute runtime…it’s fine. There’s maybe a couple of bits here and there that are problematic. Any time the cast gets louder than normal speaking volume the audio peaks massively and runs WAY too hot. And there’s maybe the odd sequence where the winds a little heavy or the mic just isn’t placed quite right resulting in a patchy recording…but hey, this is low budget filmmaking…I can accept that.

What I can’t accept is the audio quality in the closing 5-10 minutes of the film. I don’t know WHAT’S happened. But the dialogue audio basically has ended up being mixed SO much quieter than the background music to the point that I had to deafen myself to hear what the cast were mumbling about, and even THEN I couldn’t make out every word. It’s…awful, and given this is the big ending to the picture. And you’re ALREADY bullshitting us with who the killer is, screwing around with the sound until it can’t be heard anymore just makes an awful situation SO much worse.

Camp Blood 3: Within the woods didn’t make it to UK shores, instead it had a DVD release in September 2005 by Razor studios. It would later also be put out as a trilogy boxset in July 2006 again by Razor as the “Camp Blood Trilogy”…and since then, it hasn’t been seen since. I can’t actually get my hands on a copy of this film as it’s long out of print, but from what I can gather, extras are pretty thin on the ground and the picture quality, while more than watchable, could probably be cleaned up for a more than half decent HD release with some TLC.

I really want to like “Within the woods” I really do, because this film shows SO much promise. It shows how far Brad has come as a creator and a filmmaker and I really don’t want people to come away from this review thinking he’s a bad one by any stretch, because this is a perfectly serviceable work on a technical level and I’m so happy to see him grow. But I have to be honest when I say, I absolutely hated the ending with a passion and while there has been growth there’s absolutely room for improvement from here. “Within the woods” with a reworked ending and a bit more focus on the direction of the cast could have been a pretty decent middle of the road horror slasher, respectable. But because of the absolutely piss poor ending, the mixed ability audio quality and a combination of lacklustre cine and poor cast direction. I can’t recommend this one. It’s a fine enough watch. But there’s just, so much better out there. Brads on his way and I hope I get to see some of his more recent work in future as I’d love to see where the last 15 years or so have taken him…but for me? “Within the woods” is the best of a bad bunch…and that’s a shame.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/within-the-woods-2005/1/