10 Best Movies You Can Watch For Free (Legally) On YouTube Right Now

4. The Woods

the woods movie 2006
MGM

If you can forgive its boring, uninspired title, 2006's The Woods is an engaging horror-thriller. It might look like a trashy bargain bin pile of nonsense, but it's actually a methodically-constructed character study that is less interested in generating cheap thrills, and more interested in slowly ratcheting up the tension before pulling the trigger in a wild and gripping final act.

The movie follows rebel teen Heather Fasulo, a troubled youngster who is shipped off to a mysterious boarding school in the middle of the woods. Cue a disturbing story about missing girls, bloody nightmares, witches, and violent tree vines. You'd be forgiven for thinking that this is nothing more than B-movie schlock (it was released direct-to-DVD, and its cast is full of unknowns), but it's surprisingly clever, looks great, and successfully subverts expectations at every turn.

For example, there's a stereotypical "high-school bully" character, who turns out to have more depth than it seems on the surface. And best of all, the final 20 minutes explodes in a shower of violence (featuring Bruce Campbell with an axe - win) despite the rest of the movie being relatively low-key and quiet.

The Woods is smarter than it looks, and proves that straight-to-DVD doesn't always equal throwaway garbage.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!