If a much better “Fresh” had not appeared a few months before this stylized horror-thriller, perhaps “A Wounded Fawn” would have deserved a much better rating. The concept in these two films is quite similar, except that in “Ranjeno Lanet”, to translate the name of this low-budget indie horror, we know from the very beginning that the guy who will take the main protagonist to a weekend in a log cabin in the forest is a maniacal serial killer. It is a film in which the author tries to evoke Dario Argento’s classics with style and technique, but it is a film which, just like almost every new horror, tries to have some symbolic, deeper level.
Immediately in the opening scene, we meet a mysterious guy who is bidding in an auction for an ancient Greek sculpture called the Wrath of the Erinyes. According to Greek mythology, the Erinyes are goddesses of revenge and curse whose task was to persecute criminals from whom there was no escape, and they were even feared by the much more serious and well-known gods from Olympus. So even though this art dealer named Bruce (Josh Ruben) will lose the financial bid for the valuable statue, he will later stop by the house of the lady who made the higher offer, kill her and grab the statue. We then meet a museum curator in her late thirties, early forties, Meredith (Sarah Lind), who is recovering from a painful breakup and preparing for her first date with a charming guy she met at an exhibition.
And it’s no surprise that this guy is actually Bruce, and the viewer is at a great advantage here compared to the hapless Meredith, who is apparently so desperate that she will agree to go on a first date with a guy she’s only seen once in her life, to his cottage. located deep in the forest. And already on the way to that modern, urban and expensive cottage, Meredith seems to begin to understand that she made the wrong decision, but there is no turning back. What initially looked like a classic horror – a thriller about a deranged serial killer who will pursue a naive woman in the forest, will turn into surrealistic psychedelia in the second part of the film. So even though we knew from the beginning that Bruce is a maniacal killer, probably an impotent guy who chases and massacres women, it was still not possible to guess that the master went to hell just like that.