The Path

Some of the cuts are a bit jarring, especially when cutting from a quite scene to a louder one, or vice versa.

I would suggest having some audio start and fade in before the next scene in some cases, such as when it cuts to the flowing river. The audio of the river flowing could have started to come in before the cut. Then you won't have such a startle when it's suddenly really loud.

The sudden change of characters felt like it came out of nowhere. There didn't seem to be a reason for the change of character, I would suggest start hinting at a change or morals earlier on and let it slowly build up to the stabbing at the end.

The choice of location was great! Stunning shots of the mountains and the forest setting was very appealing.

I liked the jump cut to the White Shirt person wiping the blood of their knife. Only thing I could suggest there is not showing them taking out their knife but rather just them approaching the Dying Kid and having a reaction shot of the Pink Shirt person before jump cutting to the knife wiping. This should give a more intense effect, as the audience will be on the edge of their seats wondering what will happen, then BAM. Bloody knife! Give a bit more of a shock rather than just showing what's going to go down.

Good job :)

My first key point of advice to this team is to be really careful about avoiding getting wind distortion on your audio soundtrack. It is very distracting, and whilst field sound is great if you can get it clean, I would recommend doing ADR for anything where gusts were captured on your takes.

Now onto the film itself, where the locations and outfits were fantastic. A reluctant guest really threw a knife wielding cat amongst the pigeons in the woods here as a boy needing help got the 'help' he needed.

I felt the team tried to present an eery approach to proceedings, with a deliberate approach to proceedings in the deep dark woods and making the invite itself ambiguous but clearly important.

Now murderous black comedy can be grand. VERY BAD THINGS is for example one of my favourite films. But you need to earn the right to put the audience on side for dark acts. With some of the actions taken here jarring through by character actions and edits, it meant it was hard to feel any connection to proceedings because unclear motivation meant mean spirited resolutions and therefore the film played as bleak at its key moments. Promising in tone though.

Story: 2/5
Technical: 1.5/5
Elements: 2.5/5
Overall: 2/5