Movie Review: 'Entwined' Greek Horror Thriller is Too Familiar

You want some advice, dear reader? If someone tells you that a person or place is cursed, believe them. This goes double if you are a character in a movie. Generally speaking, a curse always exists in a movie. Any time elderly towns-people warn some young whipper-snapper that such and such castle is cursed or ‘no one goes into the curse forest,’ no one listens and people end up dead. We’ve seen it thousands of times and the new foreign thriller Entwined has only a minor twist on the convention.

Entwined stars Prometheus Aleifer as Panos, a young doctor who has been assigned to a small Greek village with a strong cursed vibe. The mostly elderly residents immediately warn Panos not to go into the forest. Naturally, he can’t resist, especially after he nearly struck and killed a young, attractive woman who darted in front of his car on his way to the village. It’s Panos’ duty as a doctor to check up on her right?

Hearing music blaring into the night, Panos follows the sound to a shack in the woods where he finds the young woman, Danae (Anastasia Rafaella Konidi), and sets about treating her wounds. Her wounds are quite strange, they appear like tree bark covering portions of her body. The doctor in Panos is as intrigued as the man in Panos is attracted by the beautiful, tempting and young Danae. However, she appears to live with an elderly man who is no fan of the company.

When Panos accidentally injures the old man, he manages to get him out of the cabin and back to his office where he shocks the townsfolk by treating the man. Panos doesn’t know why everyone is so shocked but when he finds out why, it may be too late. After stabilizing the old man, Panos rushes back into the forest to find Danae and convince her to come with him. She refuses and instead offers him a drink. When Panos wakes up three days later, he’s only vaguely aware of the danger he is in.

Entwined was directed by Minas Nikolakakis from a screenplay by actor John De Holland who also co-stars as Panos’ brother, George. The film is relatively well staged with a unique forest setting that I really enjoyed. Unfortunately, I could predict every inch of this plot. From the moment that Panos accepted a drink from Danae to when he became too disoriented to find his way back to his car to the time he begins to age beyond his years, there really aren’t many surprises to be found in Entwined.

The lack of suspense means that there is a great deal of weight on the actors to be compelling beyond the story being told and unfortunately, the performances never really come to life. Prometheus Aleifer does well to make Panos unique but he’s not particularly likable as written or performed. Panos comes off as moody and arrogant before transitioning into being gullible and love sick. Neither persona makes him particularly interesting.

As for his co-star, Ms Konidi is attractive but as written she’s the manic pixie dream girl of horror movie villains. Sure, she will have mind blowing sex with you but she’s also trapped you in a cursed forest and is slowly sucking out your life force. (I think that’s what is happening but I am honestly not sure, the movie is a little vague on this point.) Danae has a helpless waif quality that undoubtedly appeals to Panos as a type but the movie does little to give her much of any menacing or scary traits and instead leaves her adrift while we figure out if she’s the big bad or the forest is the big bad.

Then there is the big twist ending which also fails to surprise. Entwined employs a very heavy handed amount of foreshadowing that ruins what is clearly intended as a big reveal. I knew well beforehand what the reveal was going to be and had to catch myself from rolling my eyes so hard that it hurt. Let’s just say that Roger Ebert’s Law of Economy of Characters pretty much rules out any suspense here.

Entwined is not a terrible movie. It is quite competent in construction and execution. It’s a matter of script and plotting. The plot is far too derivative and the characters aren’t interesting enough to overcome the familiarity of the story. The film is handsome and the forest setting has a foreboding quality but that’s not nearly enough for me to recommend it. Entwined is intended as a horror mystery thriller but there isn’t much of either horror or mystery to it.