The film follows siblings Scott and Casey (Andrew Waffenschmidt and Leah Rudick) who are celebrating her birthday by going to an isolated cabin to party for the weekend with Casey's friends. The problem is that Casey's friends don't want tagalong Scott there. He's younger, and a bit of a nerd. Casey's friends are the cool types: Casey's boyfriend Derrick (Eric Carpenter), lesbian couple Robin and Jill (Kristen Adele and Amanda Rising), and jock Tom and his girlfriend Heather (Seth Stevens and Meghan Miller).

Shunned by the others, Scott spends most of his time reading a horror novel, the eponymous Kids Go to the Woods... Kids Get Dead. It seems to parallel the events of the weekend trip exactly, though Scott doesn't figure that out for some time. The film follows most of the slasher tropes. The kids are warned by the grizzled old convenience store clerk Lloyd (Kevin Shea) to stay away, to no avail. All the police officers are inept. Even though they are underage, they manage to stock up on beer, and spend a couple of days drinking, partying and having sex. Except for Derrick, who grows increasingly upset by Casey's refusal to put out. The erotic aspects are not overplayed as far as these films go, but they are definitely front and center, especially the lesbian scenes with Robin and Jill. There's even a session with a Ouija board, always a no-no in the horror movie universe.

And soon enough, the killings start. The killer is a mysterious man wearing a gas mask. He kills in a variety of ways, but mostly by stabbing. Though they are not particularly inventive, the deaths are fairly well executed, with nice blood effects. Mostly, the film's a muddle. The performances are not great, despite a couple of valiant efforts, particularly Kevin Shea's Lloyd, and they are hampered by poor dialogue and bad editing. There are a couple of very obvious goofs. At one point, a woman, fresh from coitus (during which her partner is killed though she doesn't realize it) gets up to walk to the bathroom and wash up. But instead of being nude, she is clearly wearing blue jeans when she exits the room.

But what really dooms the film to mediocrity is that it's neither scary nor particularly funny. No sort of tension is developed or maintained. There are no appreciable jump scares. The humor is crass without eliciting much more than the occasional giggle. The producers needed to overcome their small budget with a surfeit of enthusiasm and gusto, and they don't. There are a lot of intriguing hints or plot threads that could be developed or looked at more closely, but they are mostly abandoned. Gore hound completists might want to check this out, but it's a Rent It for most everyone else.

The DVD

Video:
The video is 1.78:1 widescreen, and looks fairly good. During the host segments there are portions that are presented as taped over home movies, and obviously are intended to look of poor quality. Other than that, there are a couple of moments of murkiness and aliasing, but no other big problems.

Sound:
Audio is Dolby 2 channel, and works well. The dialogue is always clearly audible, and no hiss or other problem can be heard. No subtitles are included, or alternate language tracks.

Extras:
There are a few extras included. They are:

Behind the Scenes
Four short segments are included here, mostly focusing on how they accomplished the makeup and blood effects, and usually comparing that to the finished scene.

Deleted Scenes
Three deleted scenes are shown here. They are all attempts at humor, and were presumably cut for time or the fact that they didn't quite fit with the rest of the film.

Gag Reel
This is a little more than five minutes of on set goofiness, flubs and the camera getting hit by things. It's moderately amusing.

Trailer
This is a fairly standard trailer, coming in at just over two minutes.

Final Thoughts:
Kids Go to the Woods... Kids Get Dead is trying to be a sly, self-aware horror comedy, but can't quite get the job done. The film isn't scary or exceptionally funny. There are several decently attractive people in various states of undress, and some cool blood and gore effects, but this does not a successful film make. Unfortunately, this is only a mediocre movie.