Devil's Pond (2003)

A young couple gets married, and goes to honeymoon trip to the woods. Or a small cabin on a lake, whatever - in the middle of nowhere. The new husband turns out to have serious issues with social life, communication and his visions of life are just twisted. Julianne's honeymoon will turn into a true nightmare. She will find herself marooned and chained, the only way out is by swimming after wiping off the obstacles, Mitch being the biggest one. The plot carries on nicely, it's not boring at all, just full of 'goofs', but if that doesn't matter, it's okay entertainment for evening. The biggest goof being how could she not know his boyfriend is a boy fiend indeed? They dated over one year before getting married, and this honeymoon brings out the true husband? The scary thing is, there actually exist people like this, both female and male..Mitch's behavior is exactly like one from Criminal Minds. In my mind I created a small profile about him, heh.

**SPOILERS** Having met her dreamboat Mitch, Kip Pardue, at a bus station pretty and well heeled, in the money department, Julianne or Julie, Tera Reid, didn't realize what an unstable character he really was until it was too late; after she married him. It turned out that Mitch has his eye out for Julie for some time and that chance meeting wasn't a coincident at all. It turned out that he had it planned all along!Going on their two week honeymoon at this deserted island in the middle of a lake wasn't exactly what Julie had in mind but with Mitch insisting upon it she just meekly went along with him. Mitch it turned out is a closet control freak who feels that the only way he can keep Julie is to have her a prisoner in his leaking and dilapidated cabin. At first putting up with her creepy husband Julie finally revolts against his crazy lifestyle and attempts to escape to the mainland. There's only one thing that's holding Julie back she can't swim!The movie "Devil's Pond" has Julie slowly go into some kind of "Stockholm Syndrome" meekly putting up with all the psychical and mental abuse that crazy Mitch hurls on her. Knowing that she's a captive of an unstable and possibly homicidal, in turns out that Mitch may have murdered his dad in a faked hunting accident, lunatic Julie plays along with him just in order to stay alive.Mitch for his part gets so crazy by the hour that even by giving into all his whacked out fantasies, in him being a both survivalist and nature boy, that in an act of desperation Juie overcomes her fear of water and decides to swim to shore and safety. It turns out that Mitch had the engine of his pick-up truck fixed so that it won't work making Julie's effort to escape a losing one. It also makes Mitch now look for a reason to finally get Julie out of his hair by murdering her to keep her from exposing his dark past; Mitch's possible murder of his dad to get control of that dinky cabin on the lake!Very good acting by both Kip Pardue and Tara Reid keep the movie afloat despite it's very unbelievably storyline. The ending was a bit ridicules in how Julie finally got away from Mitch's clutches. Still it was kind enough, in saving the audience from putting up any more with that nut, to have Mitch's final exit in the film happening off screen so that we, as well as Julie, would be speared the agony of witnessing it.

It's a nice thriller about a couple that goes on honeymoon to a desert little island in the middle of a lake, in the woods, far from everything. In the beginning everything seems to be fine, the couple is in love, as it is supposed to be on a honeymoon, until the day that she wants go back home and he doesn't… then, step by step, she will find out why he did chose that place to spend their honeymoon… The film is reasonably suspenseful, in spite of not having any major twist, and the plot is quite good too. The acting is also fine. Though, this kind of plot isn't really a novelty, so I think I won't score it more than 6/10.

If you are looking for a movie that has a predictable ending and in reality has a pretty far-fetched plot, this one fits the bill nicely. It's not that I didn't like it, I wasn't expecting a blockbuster and I got just what I expected, good cheap entertainment, (I saw it on LMN Network.) Mitch had thought of everything, or almost everything. You can never count on a persons fear to paralyze their actions when their life is at stake. Granted, the acting wasn't all that great at times, but I knew I wasn't watching an Academy Award Nominee. I have read a lot of bad reviews of this movie, one of which stated that the future of America was doomed if someone liked this movie. All I can say is that for me, I can watch a bad movie, which there are plenty of, or I can watch a good movie, and be equally entertained. One doesn't go into a movie such as this looking for answers to solve the world's problem, this movie and others like it are entertainment and entertainment only. Sit back relax and be entertained, even if it's counting the goofs, errors, inaccuracies, etc. Just enjoy.