Scarred is the kind of movie that make's me want to play Devil's advocate. I wouldn't pay $25 for it--I didn't even like it, particularly--but I also see a few diamonds in the rough. The movie doesn't do anything stand-out amazing (save perhaps an icky face-peeling scene near the end), but it adds some nice kinks to the killer-in-the-woods subgenre. Unfortunately, thanks to budget and time constraints, nice is all any of the movie's innovations are.

The Hansons are going camping, because Mr. Hanson has just remarried and thinks a trip to the woods is a fine way for the kids to bond with their new family member. A park ranger (David Austen) tells them about a faceless woman who hunts in the woods, slicing off beautiful faces and taking them for herself. Everyone dismisses this story as an urban legend and then, one by one, they start dying. Just your average, run-of-the mill slasher, right? Not exactly.

At first glance, the Hansons look like archetypes in some Friday the 13th style morality play. The stepmother's a bitch (Thanks a lot, Frank, she spits when a branch smacks her in the face because her husband forgot to hold it out of the way), the kids talk to nobody unless they can grumble under their breaths, and the father is both desperate and naive. They seem like the sort of people we love to hate, who will undoubtedly get what they deserve.

Except they aren't.

It turns out that daughter Kim (Julian Berlin) feels guilty about the way she treats her stepmom, and soon apologizes. Nor is stepmother Heather (Maxine Bahns) such a bitch after all. She's just trying to find her place in this family, and makes a sweet (if awkward) gesture: she gives Kim some make-up. And Kim's brother Ben, who spends hikes immersed in his Game Boy and Walkman--the picture of adolescent disaffectation, it seems--cares very deeply about his girlfriend, Alex (Charity Shea). We're not talking Jude the Obscure, here (heck, we aren't even talking Shaun of the Dead), but these characters have a bit more psychological depth than I expected.

While the Hansons are more complex than I'd hoped for, they're stilll not real enough to be interesting. The actors do a great job of making the Hansons vulnerable and likeable (I especially liked Jonny Mack as Ben), but no actor can fill the gaping holes left by this script. Writer/directors Jon Hoffman and Dave Rock admit that they didn't have the time to flesh out these characters as much as they would've liked, and that's a shame. Had Scarred spent more energy exploring just who these people are, it could have been a whole lot of fun. Instead, it makes them decide and do things suddenly, out of the blue. I'll believe that some of Kim's anger toward her stepmother is actually disguised hurt--the fear that her dad loves Heather more than her. But this revelation comes out of nowhere. I would've liked to probe Kim's feelings a bit more, subtly, before she broadcast them.

In fact, I'd argue that the most well-rounded character in Scarred is the killer. Her legend is told in dreamy, dialogueless flashback, and was my favorite sequence in the film. Her mother was married to a violent drunkard, but fell in love with a trapper who had a strange skin condition. She got pregnant, and by the time she gave birth it was obvious whose baby it was. The moonshiner hated the child, and one day cut off her face--that constant reminder of his wife's lover--and threw her body into the woods. Now an adult, the woman without a face is certainly violent....but she can also be sympathetic, even playful. Perhaps she's so intriguing, in part, because she doesn't speak. It's more actress Hannah Leigh's job than the screenwriters' to create the character, and she does it extremely well.

There aren't many extras on this disc (just a directors' commentary, two trailers, and a deleted scene), but I can't really complain about the movie's presentation. Sounds are clear, the rustling noises in the trees are effective, and the picture is mostlty colorful and crisp. Some scenes are a little dark, but I can't fault distributor MTI for that; any lighting problems are probably due to the source material.

I can't recommend Scarred. It's a movie that's been made thousands of times and doesn't take its good ideas far enough to be worthwhile. Even its gore is pretty hit-or-miss. Some indie films can make me feel or think in ways a big-budget Hollywood movie can't--but sadly, Scarred isn't that kind of indie film.