Director: Bruce Wemple
Writer: Bruce Wemple (Screenplay)
Starring: Grant Schumacher, Dylan Grunn, Chris Cimperman, Rick Montgomery Jr, Peter Stray, Ariella Mastroianni, Catharine Daddario
Plot: A man finds himself alone and lost after a horrifying encounter with a monster during a backpacking trip into the Adirondack High Peaks. Now, he must fight for his life, and sanity, as he battles the evil Native American legend, The Wendigo.
Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: The Retreat starts when two friends Gus (Schumacher) and Adam (Grunn) head of for a hiking trip for the bachelor event for Adam, where they do get warned about the appearance of the Wendigo.
After an attack during the night Gus can’t remember what happened, only he finds Adam’s body, Gus is caught up in trying to remember, with a Therapist (Stray) trying to get him to open up about the truth before it is too late, uncovering a truth that Gus might not want to talk about.
Thoughts on The Retreat
Final Thoughts – The Retreat follows two friends that on a hiking trip make an encounter with the Wendigo monster lurking in the woods, one that starts to hunt them down, with consequences one simply can’t deal with. This story has been done before, seeing one person start to lose their mind in a remote area, this time being the woods where their hiker trip is taking place. We do jump between time, with a therapy session going on, asking the lead character whether he remembers what happened, leaving us to be left in the middle of what Gus is going through. Grant Schumacher in the leading role does give us the strongest performance as we see how he is caught up in the middle of learning the truth, showing the unease mindset his character is going through, we also get a nice creature creation, that slowly get more involved through the film, lurking in the shadows to start with. We also fall into the problem of turning to, too many different endings, where it cleaned up before pulling the rug away heading in another direction too many times.
