Will (Tyler Gallant) and Jessica (Elissa Dowling) do a podcast on the unexplained. They are hired to film a documentary about the Wood Devil. The story goes a woodsman made a pact with the devil to save a forest and he is there to protect it from intruders. Only God can make a tree and only the devil can keep the wood up. They take along Sarah French for eye candy. She is supposed to be the camera person, but I never see her with a camera. They never set up for shoots.

Some of the film seemed professional while other scenes were first-time mistakes. We don't need footage of passing houses or your RV's mirror when there is nothing to see. The restaurant scene was a complete waste. When it comes to found footage, less is more.

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

Just down the road from Burkittsville, on the outskirts of the New Jersey Pine Barrons, two college students-grungy fanboy William and the purple-haired, retro-hippie geek girl Jessica-host "The Spooky Hour," a podcast about paranormal phenomena and urban legends. One of their fans is Laura Benott, a Hollwyood film producer who thinks they're perfect for her pet project: a documentary about the curse of The Wooden Devil, a mysterious creature who haunts the Rootwood Forest on the outskirts of Los Angeles-and is responsible for the disappearances of dozens of campers and curiosity seekers.

And our Shaggy and Thelma see dollar signs and fame. So you know what that means: buy extra Scooby Snacks, call Daphne (in this context: the Kardashian- fashionista, Erin),and load in The Mystery Machine (in this context: a film equipment-stocked camper). We're going to hunt for some mythical, legendary witches and devils of The Blair Witch Project (1999) and The Last Broadcast (1998) variety. (And don't come a knockin' for any ghouls from The Evil Dead, not in these woods.)

So who's this Satanic agent of Pan in this found footage-cum-mock-documentary hybrid tucked inside a traditional narrative film: a forest ranger who pledged his soul to protect the woods-and became The Wooden Devil. (All expositional, natch.)

As is the case with most found footage romps and mock-documentary chronicles, there's a lengthy (30 minute) set up-much of it in handheld or ear-perched POV shots-of "character development" until we get to the first sense of the "horror" of The Wooden Devil: a paint-peeled image of a devil on a remote, graffiti-scrawled water tank and a blood-stained noose found in the knothole of a tree. Eventually, Erin starts ranting about seeing some "bat creature thing" off camera and Will and Jess-stumbling around in the dark with POV cameras rolling-find the ubiquitous stone circle with a symbol made of twigs at its center. And that damned noose keeps showing up in the most unlikely places.

Rootwood is a film that takes its time; it rolls out like an old, low-budget Drive-In horror film of the '60s and '70s (watch for twisty ending: for all is not as it seems). This is a film that dispatches with the CGI-painted shock-scares of today's modern horror and goes for the well-shot in-camera effects (courtesy of lush cinematography from Thomas Rist, he of the German-language documentary Let It Bleed: 40 Years of the Rolling Stones) with everything just on the peripheral, in the shadows. In today's big-budget, major-studio horror landscape, it's a nice chance of pace to see filmmakers take the mystery-suspense route. The well-scored music and crisp sound effects by Klaus Pfreundner and Tim Heinrich, respectively, add to the slow-building foreboding.

Director Marcel Walz received recognition for previous project: a 2016 re-imagining of Herschell Gordon Lewis's 1963 cult classic, Blood Feast. Screenwriter Mario von Czapiewski made his debut with the 2012 German-produced/language feature Cannibal Diner. Felissa Rose (Laura Benott, the film producer) got her start in the business in her early teens as "Angela" in 80s cult favorite, Sleepaway Camp. And you horror hounds have seen scream queen Elissa Dowling (Jennifer) around on several low-budget films of the SyFy Channel variety; we previously reviewed her 2015 film, We Are Still Here.

To say Rose and Dowling are the hardest working ladies in show business is an understatement: Rose has a mindboggling 30 films in various states of production; Dowling's working on 17 films of her own. Sara French (Erin the fashionista),in thirteen short years, has already appeared in 75 low-budget direct-to-DVD films. Professional ex-hockey player Tyler Gallant is relatively new to the acting game and shows a lot of promise in front of the camera; I can see him appearing on episodes of two of my favorite TV series: Blue Bloods and Law and Order: SVU, sometime soon.

Getting the scoop of a lifetime, a pair of podcast hosts on local urban legends head off into the woods with a friend of theirs looking for a local legend called the Wooden Devil, but when they start to believe someone or something is in the woods with them must try to get away alive.

This here was a solid and enjoyable enough effort. One of the more enjoyable elements is the general setup here, for not only their filming of the documentary but the backstory of their assignment. A truthful small-town-sounding story about their belief that he had sold his soul and has now started to haunt a section of the local forest, this is perfectly acceptable fodder to get this going. As well, the stories and evidence about the disappearances from the area serve as a fine enhancement of the local legend that would spawn such an undertaking here, making this one quite worthwhile in the setup. With that taken care of, the film's scenes of the group out in the woods mix a fine sense of playfulness and genuine eeriness. The banter between the girl and the guy where she's trying to put the moves on him against his knowledge gives this a light atmosphere where the advances are lost on him yet causes scolding looks from her friend. These are infrequent enough not to be annoying and balance out the creepier elements that serve this one quite well, as the abandoned home made of twigs, the memorial adorned with names of confirmed missing persons and the noose inside the tree have solid suspenseful attributes. The other really enjoyable aspect to be found here is the chilling final half. Graced with the appropriate creepy build-up about the forest not being safe, there are some genuinely terrifying moments with the sight of various body-parts moving when you aren't focused or least expecting it. Keeping the creature to shadows for the duration of an extended nighttime chase in the woods lit by flashlight with an already terrified individual enhances the scare factor even more by giving off the kind of partial glimpses that later provide a complete picture, which manage to give this enough to hold it up for the most part. There are a few minor factors involved here. Among the biggest issues here is the strangely out-of-character outburst about the missing friend ruining the potential footage for the shoot rather than being more concerned with their upset and traumatized friend who just went missing when that wasn't a problem beforehand. As well, a truly problematic issue is the series of twists and turns offered by the finale, oftentimes twisting on itself in a new twist for no reason and simply doing so for no purpose as none of it makes any sense in the slightest. This is confusing in the extreme and ends this on a sour note with all the flaws being packed into the final minutes.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.