Michael Ledo This is a made for TV SyFy movie. A group of tourists are tricked into entering a realm filled with the characters from Grimm's fairy tales, with some slight modifications such as the seven dwarfs being cannibals. The film seems to be geared toward kids with some mild swearing. As they search for a missing infant, the stories take their toll.

lost-in-limbo Now this is more like it. The Syfy original "Black Forest" actually shows that these productions can surprise and what we got was passable entertainment. Asinine, but enjoyable. What it makes up for in its low- budget, is in its concept creativity. Sure the execution is quite so-so and the CGI can be flat and laughable, but the atmospherics do work because of its well-etched production designs. Creating a fairytale world brought up many possibilities to explore and these disjointed stories involving wolves, fairies, dwarfs, witches and trolls do come alive. These aren't your friendly childhood stories, as some unlucky tourists find themselves getting lost in a magical forest in Germany and trying to stay alive by not becoming apart of the story. How to keep that from happening; sticking to the tradition of the fairy-tales. The script might be cheesy, but the story stays intriguing and creates some amusing, off-the-wall scenarios. I do think that the first half setting up the fantastical predicament is much stronger than the second half where things get senseless as the tourists are trying to figure a way out. The performances are agreeable despite their leaden characters with abeyant Ben Cross being the name grabber. Humour can be a little self- knowing, but it's not a distraction. One thing I noticed was the music theme that was constantly played resembled that of the 1987 "Predator". Better than expected SyFy original. "Let's hope there's no wicked witch inside".

llawrance1972 I've seen a far few SyFy films and watched this one with quite a bit on fast forward. It was though quite good fun and had some interesting ideas with some good performances,e.g.Cazmar and The Doctor, and attempts at a decent storyline. The main let down were the effects and some of the performances that were poor and unconvincing. This is a shame as the story had real potential and the initial premise was very strong. It was good to have a movie set outside of America and that played with conventions so much more than normal. There was a good, scary, effective movie hiding away in this and it is a shame that it got buried! Worth watching, but only just.

Paul Andrews Black Forest is set in Germany where a strange man named Cazmar (Ben Cross) entices tourists of all nationalities to take his guided tour of the area including the so-called black forest where the Grimm fairy tales were written, Carzmar drives one such bus load of tourists to a hill with various large stones laid out there & they all decide to take part in some sort of ancient ritual. Before anyone know's what's going on an evil fairy creature thing had appeared & then disappeared along with a young baby belonging to a couple on the tour, Cazmar has also vanished & the stranded party soon realise that they have been transported to anther dimension where fairy tales are real but are much more evil than in any kid's story. The group find shelter at an old inn as they come under attack from dark forces that hide in the forest, can they survive, rescue the baby & find a way back to normal reality?Directed by Patrick Dinhut this is maybe slightly more ambitious & original than the average SyFy Channel crap but ultimately Black Forest is still just as crap, all the usual problems & deficiencies are present & just because the makers had slightly loftier ambitious doesn't mean they are any less substandard. At just over eighty minutes Black Forest still felt like it went on for days as it dragged on, every character is utterly stupid & annoying while the whole concept is wasted. I mean a dark horror film set in a twisted fairy tale world could have been great as various character's meet their death in gruesome ways based on ideas from classic fairy tales but in the hands of the SyFy Channel it amounts to nothing as there's nothing clever here & the film is very bland & forgettable. To be honest I can't remember that much about it as the story is so weak but it has to do with an evil guy who can change into an old woman or a Wolf who lures unsuspecting tourists into this world to kill them & that's about it. Nothing of any note happens, it's all so poorly written & staged that you simply don't care about anyone or anything. The whole film is just lazy, cheap & boring with no flashes of inspiration or creepiness that it's origins could have provided. Black Forest is the sort of film that is hard to describe, it sounds good but is just a limp & disappointing waste of time.Black Forest looks terrible considering it's meant to be a dark adult fairy tale horror film, it's far too bright & the main forest location looks like some recreation area complete with gentle paths. Even the fake Toadstools look poor. The other two main examples of this interesting genre are The Brother Grimm (2005) & The Company of Wolves (1984) which are both much darker & much better than Black Forest, the difference is actually quite amazing. As you would expect the CGI special effects are rotten, from someone turning into a Raven to a Wolf trying to smile to a huge Troll it all looks absolutely rubbish. There's no real blood or gore, there's a severed finger but not much else worth mentioning.Probably shot on a low budget this is set in Germany but was obviously filmed in the US, the whole film looks cheap & what should have been a dark twisted fantasy world ends up looking like a local picnic spot. The acting is also terrible, the babysitter Amber was cute but since she's the first to die that's another reason to dislike Black Forest.Black Forest completely lacks the dark atmosphere & visuals that should have present, it also lacks any sort of decent story which doesn't help. Look, Black Forest is total crap that is maybe a little bit more original than your average horror film but is still crap when all said & done.