There’s a special corner of hell reserved for fairy-tale horror movies that think they’re clever. Right next to the table where Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is force-fed day-old gingerbread is Lionel Delplanque’s Deep in the Woods, a French slasher that proves you can take Little Red Riding Hood, lace it with wine, and still produce a movie so limp it makes “Grandmother, what big eyes you have” sound like Shakespeare.
The premise is simple: five actors show up to a remote castle to perform Red Riding Hood for a wheelchair-bound baron, and wouldn’t you know it—someone in a wolf costume starts killing people. That sounds like it could be either terrifying or hilariously campy. Instead, the film chooses a third option: utter boredom disguised as art-house gloom.
Opening Credits: Murder Before Milk and Cookies
The movie begins with a mother reading Little Red Riding Hood to her son. Cute, right? Wrong. Within minutes she’s murdered in front of the kid, because why not traumatize your audience the same way the character is traumatized? This sets the tone for the rest of the movie: take something innocent, smother it in faux-Gothic lighting, and hope no one notices the script is emptier than a Paris café at closing time.
The Actors: Five Flavors of Annoying
Our troupe of actors arrives at the castle to perform for the baron. Immediately you can tell these are not seasoned thespians, but walking clichés:
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Sophie – The “final girl” who spends the entire movie frowning like she just smelled spoiled cheese.
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Matilda – Token flirty one, murdered in the shower because originality is for losers.
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Jeanne – The “sensitive” one, also murdered for showing human emotion.
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Wilfried – The clown, which in horror language means “walking corpse.”
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Matthew – The brooding love interest who looks guilty at every turn, which means he’s obviously not the killer.
They’re hired to perform Little Red Riding Hood in a “modernized stage-play.” I can only imagine what that means—probably something avant-garde like Red Riding Hood rapping in leather pants. But the movie can’t even give us the cringe of bad theater. Instead, it skips right into “castle party” mode.
The Baron: Diet Phantom of the Opera
The castle belongs to Baron Axel de Fersen, a man in a wheelchair who greets them like a discount Bond villain. He has a deaf son named Nicolas, which the film treats less like a character and more like a plot device labeled “Sympathetic Kid.” The baron spends ten minutes looking mysterious, then conveniently vanishes, leaving only a bloodstain—because apparently, even aristocrats ghost their own parties.
The Party: Drink, Dance, Die
The actors, being idiots, decide to keep drinking and dancing despite the bloody hint that something is off. Sophie, the only one with half a brain, says, “Maybe we should leave.” But no, her friends insist she’ll get lost in the woods. Because obviously staying in a murder castle with a missing baron is the safer choice.
One by one, they’re picked off:
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Matilda gets stabbed in the shower by a man in a wolf costume, a scene that manages to be neither erotic nor scary, just wet.
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Jeanne is murdered soon after, proving that anyone with a soul doesn’t survive past Act Two.
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Wilfried, the comic relief, gets killed because no slasher movie can resist removing joy from the room.
By this point, the audience is not scared, but wondering if Netflix has anything better in the “Foreign Horror” category.
The Wolf Reveal: Scooby-Doo Would Be Ashamed
Eventually, Sophie and Matthew stumble upon the killer, who turns out to be—drumroll—Baron Axel de Fersen himself. Yes, the wheelchair guy is the wolf. If that feels like a spoiler, I apologize, but honestly, the movie spoils itself by being so predictable. The reveal plays less like a shocking twist and more like an episode of Scooby-Doo: “And I’d have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling actors!”
The Tone: Grimm, Not Grim
What’s most baffling about Deep in the Woods is how self-serious it is. This isn’t campy fun like Sleepaway Camp or knowingly ridiculous like Cabin in the Woods. No, this film wants to be Gothic and poetic, with heavy shadows, moody violin stings, and characters whispering cryptic lines as if auditioning for a perfume commercial. But all the atmosphere in the world can’t hide the fact that you’re watching a man in a Halloween-store wolf mask stab twenty-somethings who forgot to lock their doors.
The Award That Makes No Sense
And here’s the kicker: this film won Best European Fantasy Film at the 2000 Sitges Film Festival. Which raises the obvious question: What were the other nominees? Did the jury just give up after the first screening? Was the competition a puppet show in Luxembourg? It feels like giving “Best Chef” to someone who can barely microwave soup.
The Kill Scenes: Bare Minimum Blood
Slasher movies live or die (pun intended) on their kills. But here, the murders are tame, uninspired, and edited like the cameraman fell asleep on the zoom button. The shower stabbing tries to echo Psycho, but instead feels like a shampoo ad gone wrong. The rest are blink-and-you-miss-it affairs, as though the director was terrified of upsetting censors—or worse, the audience’s patience.
The Ending: Don’t Cry Wolf
By the climax, Sophie kills the baron and flees with Matthew and Nicolas, the deaf son. It’s all very triumphant, except you don’t care. You don’t care about Sophie, you don’t care about Matthew, and you certainly don’t care about Nicolas, who exists solely to tug heartstrings that were never strummed.
The film ends with the survivors staggering out of the castle, but the real horror is realizing you wasted ninety minutes watching a movie that somehow makes Little Red Riding Hood boring.
Why It Fails: Lost in Its Own Woods
Deep in the Woods fails for three main reasons:
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It confuses atmosphere with storytelling. Fog machines and violins don’t make up for characters who act like goldfish.
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The kills are lazy. If your slasher film doesn’t deliver creative deaths, what’s the point?
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It takes itself way too seriously. A man in a wolf mask stabbing actors in a castle should be fun. Instead, it’s treated like Gothic tragedy.
This could have been a campy cult classic. Instead, it’s a forgettable festival darling collecting dust on a Region 2 DVD.
Final Verdict: Into the Woods, Out of Patience
Deep in the Woods is less “terrifying fairy tale” and more “bad dinner theater with body count.” It’s the kind of movie you only remember because someone at a horror festival told you it won an award and you can’t believe it.
If you want a fairy-tale horror movie, watch The Company of Wolves. If you want a French horror movie, watch High Tension. If you want to waste your time, well, this one’s right here, waiting in the shadows, ready to huff and puff and bore you to death.
