The Curse of Wolf Mountain is hard work. Everything happens too fast, too predictably, and in a weirdly jumbled manner which only serves to baffle. We have it all; the troubled young man, sweet but whiny girlfriend, stolidly reliable big bro, and a random assortment of inconsequential expendables, including the token Mr. Macho, flexing his muscles and giving it large. The rest are faceless fillers to whom the camping trip is a lark (the slo-mo shots of skimpily-clad girls showing tanned and toned torsos as they groove to carefree music by a pool at the start is a bit of a hint at what to expect).

Young couple Aj (Keli Price) and newly pregnant Sam (Karissa Lee Staples) have everything going for them; the only snag being Aj’s recurring nightmares about the death of his parents on a camping trip to Wolf Mountain when he was a little’un. When Dr. Avery (Tobin Bell) suggests Aj return to the scene of the tragedy to exorcise his demons, older brother Max (David Lipper), who’s a big part of Aj’s life, insists on accompanying him, like any bro would. Somebody’s up there already though; nefarious Eddie (Danny Trejo) and Joe (Kenny Yates), whose business there consists of getting rid of their useless third wheel and burying big wads of ill-gotten cash. Things fragment somewhat upon the campers’ arrival, setting the tone for what turns out to be a peculiar patchwork of a movie with some serious pacing and continuity issues.

The first thing they do is go to bed, apparently in broad daylight, in TARDIS-like tents looking outwardly like average 2-man jobs, but inside as spacious as ballrooms. On waking (still in daylight; day and night seem to randomly occur in order to suit the scene, emphasising that in filmmaking the devil is in the detail, as this really stands out), Aj and Sam discover all the others are AWOL, but decide to head to the death site anyway. Events become even more disconnected when a masked killer shows up and bodies start dropping. Somewhere amidst this confusion, screams in the night lead to reckless blunderings into the darkness where according to legend, a mountain-dwelling beast awaits, ready to pick the unwary off one by one in a series of wholly unsurprising, awkwardly choreographed attacks.

The Curse of Wolf Mountain is the sort of film that’ll only be of potential interest to those who’ve never seen a horror in their lives. Even a non-veteran audience will see it coming from a mile away. It’s not spiky or twisty, just a re-hash of a million other slashers-in-the-dark we’ve all seen before. The acting isn’t awful, but most of the characters are just void; there’s nothing to like about any of them (in fact they’re downright annoying, with the exception of the youngest ranger who reminded me irresistibly of the overenthusiastic rookie cop in Monster House, adding light relief to a film lost in the woods). The best bit for me was the unmasking of the killer, which was so deliciously reminiscent of Scooby Doo it almost hurt.

The Curse of Wolf Mountain would have made a passable comedy with a few tweaks; there were elements of humour but too few, and like the rest of it they just didn’t come together with everything else to make for a satisfying watch.