The cabin in the woods plot is a well overused one in horror cinema. Michael Crum draws a good deal upon what has gone before – in particular, The Evil Dead (1982) we even get homage paid in a scene with the playing of tape recordings from an academic who was researching the area. The efforts show through with painful regard at times. There is one scene that has been ludicrously contrived for the sole purpose of having the four girls strip to their underwear in order to wade across a creek, while the relatively mundane crossing is absurdly pumped into a big drama with the addition of a ridiculously hyped musical score and really fake fog blowing across. Even the cabin in the woods is not a cabin in the woods but a farmhouse in the middle of an open field. Not to mention that despite the retitling Lake Fear, there are no lakes anywhere in the film.

Not long after we arrive at the cabin, the film descends into an absurd horror show. The scenes with the girls investigating the noises, the portal/image projected on the wall, victims being dragged down into a pool of blood in the forest all have an ineptitude of execution. There is not even any discernible plot in the latter two thirds of the film – it is just Michael Crum pulling shock effect after shock effect such that everything runs into an incomprehensible mass like a bad nightmare you can’t wake up from. The most surreal moment is the scene involving demons engaged in a choreographed dance. The nearest I could compare the film to is a no-budgeted attempt to replicate something like David Lynch’s almost entirely plotless final episode of the original Twin Peaks (1990-1) – the one spent running through the Black Lodge – albeit made by people who haven’t an ounce of Lynch’s talent.

The backwoods slasher The Everglades Killing (2016) was retitled Lake Fear 2: The Swamp but is unrelated to this film in any way.
 

Trailer here:-