Summary
There’s nothing to grumble over specifically — sometimes horror is just horror.
This review of Netflix film Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight contains no spoilers. The horror film was released on the platform on October 28, 2020.
As we approach the end of horror month, we can be reminded how much streaming services spoil us. From the highly popular The Haunting of Bly Manor to Norwegian chiller Cadaver, with the absence of cinema, we still have solutions for the loyal audience. And on the final week to sign off another year, Netflix releases Polish thriller Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight, that for all intents and purposes is a Gen-Z’s nightmare.
The premise follows a group of teenagers that attend a rehabilitation camp in the middle of a forest. Their addiction is technology. Director Bartosz M. Kowalski has a view of the world that we should lay down our phones and forget the screens. I always find plots that center on technology addiction to be quite misguided because we live in a world where society relies on it; it’s not like we have a choice anymore if we have been born in a modernised community. But for these teenagers, the sole purpose is to stay away from their phones.
Of course, that’s integral to the plot — the requirement not to have the ability to communicate with someone outside of the camp means if something sinister is lurking, there’s no way of being able to warn anyone. The sinister force in Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight is eager to take these teenagers “offline forever” — a byline that slightly made me chuckle.
Like most horrors that centre on the teen spirit, Netflix’s Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight offers highly hormonal characters — some introverted, others extroverted as they all navigate the darkness that they are about to face. The story uses the forest to ignite chaos, giving the characters space to be separated and experience the incoming violence at different times.
But Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight is not special, and there’s no particular reason for any horror fans to lurch for it for horror month. The Netflix film enjoys the usual tropes, and most of the events are predictable. Regardless, there’s nothing to grumble over specifically — sometimes horror is just horror.
