At Camp Grindlestone, Sarah and Kelly find themselves paired up which would be fine except the two couldn't be any different, the ever-upbeat Sarah is out to win every badge that she can, and Kelly couldn't care less about the whole thing and at first seems like a total brat - but she does become a little more sympathetic after a scene where she reveals that she's only even at the camp because her presumably distant parents want to get rid of her for a few weeks..heavy! They take an ill-advised hike into the forbidden part of the woods wih a spooky local legend and soon find themselves lost and captive at the hands of three demented hillbilly grannies, and it does get a bit hairy but the odds are pretty good that the girls will survive and emerge from their misadventure as the best of friends! I love the trio of grungy old witchy women who are a bit like a poor man's Hocus Pocus, they really brought the fun to the episode and act as the villains, even though there's a much greater evil at work in the form of the mysterious Watcher that haunts the woods and cursed them to be trapped in the woods forever, which is probably what made them so crazy! I like the edginess of their implied threats of beheading and cannibalism, and it was a very nice touch how all three of the ladies had their own little personality. They felt reminiscent to me of the blind witches from Clash of the Titans.. It's very fun like they always are but it's also a somewhat weak episode to me and feels a bit overly random and sloppy somewhere.. The elements don't quite come together as well as they probably should - for one thing you're not that sure if you actually want to see the wicked old bags set free from their curse or not! So for me this is not one of the show's best but it is fun as a tale that works as both a ghost and a scary campfire story that's a little on the macabre side! Always a pleasure to revisit this wonderful show. X
Are You Afraid of the Dark? (TV Series)
The Tale of Watcher's Woods (1994)
User Reviews
Review this title3 Reviews
Love this episode
eric-donnelly26 November 2018
A mixture of weird plot, characters and dialogue.
TOMNEL23 June 2008
Warning: Spoilers
What the heck was the writer of this episode thinking? Normally, this series has episodes run on clichés, but they're fun, entertaining and sometimes hilarious in their camp. This one is strangely violent for a Nickelodeon show, and it's like one writer took half the plot and another writer finished it to make two strange and confusing plots.
Sarah is new to a summer camp and is trying to make friends. She tries to befriend a little girl who can only be described using a 5 letter word rhyming with "fitch" named Kelly. Kelly for some reason hates her and is always making fun of her and stealing her clothes. They end up being assigned each other as partners on a trip into the woods, and they get split up and lost. Kelly gets trapped by 3 creepy old ladies who were actually lost in the forest 70 some years ago. Meanwhile Sarah tries finding where she is and is confronted several times by the Watcher of the Woods, who is just kind of there to keep her on her toes, he never really does anything. Sarah must retrieve 3 whistles from camp to save the day.
After watching this, I was nearly dumbfounded. This is possibly the most ill conceived, strangely written episode of the series, not to say it wasn't oddly entertaining. The violence is not anything too bad, but it's more disturbing than in any other episodes, including what looks like a lively skinned horses head and a demon like man with no skin on his face. The characters were too clichéd for their own good. I understand Kelly is supposed to be mean, but come on, she's like a female Damian. The three old ladies were evil. They tried to kill both girls, by shooting a flaming arrow at one, and by trying to behead another. They should be sad, lonely souls but instead were pure evil, similar to Kelly. The Wood Watcher makes no sense and should have been a separate episode altogether. He only has about 2 minutes of screen time in 3 short scenes. One scene Kelly decides she's going to smoke a cigarette...she's like 10 years old. Here's a spoiler on the oh so predictable ending, the kids escape and get back to camp after freeing the souls of the old women. At the end, the old women are back to being kids, and they seem perfectly happy with Sarah and Kelly, yet minutes ago they were going to kill them. Sarah and Kelly also seem happy to see their old homicidal friends.
This is just a weird episode. It's sort of funny, but in a bad way, though I must say, it breaks barriers some other episodes didn't in violence and macabre content. Still, it's one of the worst episodes of the series.
My rating: * 1/2 out of ****. 30 mins. TVY7
Sarah is new to a summer camp and is trying to make friends. She tries to befriend a little girl who can only be described using a 5 letter word rhyming with "fitch" named Kelly. Kelly for some reason hates her and is always making fun of her and stealing her clothes. They end up being assigned each other as partners on a trip into the woods, and they get split up and lost. Kelly gets trapped by 3 creepy old ladies who were actually lost in the forest 70 some years ago. Meanwhile Sarah tries finding where she is and is confronted several times by the Watcher of the Woods, who is just kind of there to keep her on her toes, he never really does anything. Sarah must retrieve 3 whistles from camp to save the day.
After watching this, I was nearly dumbfounded. This is possibly the most ill conceived, strangely written episode of the series, not to say it wasn't oddly entertaining. The violence is not anything too bad, but it's more disturbing than in any other episodes, including what looks like a lively skinned horses head and a demon like man with no skin on his face. The characters were too clichéd for their own good. I understand Kelly is supposed to be mean, but come on, she's like a female Damian. The three old ladies were evil. They tried to kill both girls, by shooting a flaming arrow at one, and by trying to behead another. They should be sad, lonely souls but instead were pure evil, similar to Kelly. The Wood Watcher makes no sense and should have been a separate episode altogether. He only has about 2 minutes of screen time in 3 short scenes. One scene Kelly decides she's going to smoke a cigarette...she's like 10 years old. Here's a spoiler on the oh so predictable ending, the kids escape and get back to camp after freeing the souls of the old women. At the end, the old women are back to being kids, and they seem perfectly happy with Sarah and Kelly, yet minutes ago they were going to kill them. Sarah and Kelly also seem happy to see their old homicidal friends.
This is just a weird episode. It's sort of funny, but in a bad way, though I must say, it breaks barriers some other episodes didn't in violence and macabre content. Still, it's one of the worst episodes of the series.
My rating: * 1/2 out of ****. 30 mins. TVY7
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