SILENT RETREAT is your latest no-budget horror flick with no redeeming values and a lot of bad stuff indeed. It's a poorly-shot, poorly-acted mess, with a predictable storyline that goes nowhere and a general lack of motivation that makes it difficult to sit through. This is amateurish stuff indeed, with a bunch of hateful characters vacationing in a remote cabin for the weekend and finding themselves menaced by a foe. There's no sex or gore to speak of so nothing for the horror or exploitation fan, and indeed 99% of the running time consists of characters just wandering around aimlessly.
What we do get is a whole lot of arguing and insults between the unpleasant cast members. It feels as if the scriptwriters went out of their way to make the characters as unlikeable as possible, and it works; you'll be itching for them to die violently after about five minutes, although sadly it doesn't work out that way. I also have to laugh at the way these cheap US films always seem to have one Brit in the cast whose accent sounds completely unrealistic to this British viewer.
What we do get is a whole lot of arguing and insults between the unpleasant cast members. It feels as if the scriptwriters went out of their way to make the characters as unlikeable as possible, and it works; you'll be itching for them to die violently after about five minutes, although sadly it doesn't work out that way. I also have to laugh at the way these cheap US films always seem to have one Brit in the cast whose accent sounds completely unrealistic to this British viewer.