Its title is rather brilliant, in its own way; there can be little confusion about exactly what type of story Kids Go to the Woods… Kids Get Dead is aiming to tell. Unfortunately, there’s neither any imagination nor slickness of execution on display in writer-director Michael Hall’s terrible, micro-budgeted slasher flick.

Kids Go to the Woods centers on a group of kids who… OK, you get the picture. There’s characteristically virginal Casey (Leah Rudnick), her bookish younger brother Scott (Andrew Waffenschmidt), and five of Casey’s friends (Seth Stephens, Amanda Rising, Kristen Adele and the spunky Meghan Miller) as well as her boyfriend Derrick (Eric Carpenter). After the requisite run-in with a weird convenience store clerk (Kevin Shea) who warns of dark things, the kids repair to the cabin of a stoner uncle of one of them. Some drinking, make-out sessions and a spooky ouija board gathering ensue, until a masked killer starts his stalking.

Nevermind the wildly uneven acting or the fact that (once again) this is a movie which tries to pass off burly 25-year-olds as teenagers who can’t buy beer. Apart from a couple passably amusing throwaway lines of dialogue and one mildly entertaining kill scenario, this is a movie with no imagination. It’s poorly paced and flatly shot, in often terribly conceived single-shot style.

And when a movie is this bad, it usually further manifests in a variety of frustrating ways — things like having characters carry and toast with empty cups, and, in this instance, stand thisclose to a wall while using a stand-up urinal, and having characters rest their arms on top of it. Oh, there’s also a murder scene where blood appears on a pillow before anyone gets stabbed.

To additionally pad out his movie’s 85-minute running time, Hall concocts a wrap-around device with “horror host” Candy Adams (Carly Goodspeed), loosely in the vein of Rhonda Shear or Vampira, except by way of Swingers. This gimmick, along with occasional video interference and mock bits of taped-over commercials and home movies, is meant to conjure up warm VHS memories; it’s lame, and adds nothing to the proceedings. Yes, there’s some nudity here (three out of the four ladies get topless), for the Joe Bob Briggs set, but even that — which made the ’80s-era movies this knock-off seeks to emulate worthwhile for a certain audience — only illustrates how pointless and out of touch Hall’s Kids is.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Kids Go to the Woods… Kids Get Dead comes to DVD on a region-free disc, in 16×9 widescreen, with optional chapter stops. In addition to a trailer, its slate of bonus features includes three deleted scenes and a collection of four brief behind-the-scenes segments which spotlight the filming of different scenes. The high point, though, is a five-minute gag reel in which wiffeball accidents occur, a kitten wanders into frame, and virtually every cast member simulates fellatio; it’s Miller, though, who gets the ultimate win, for her energetic spit take. As far as DIY, low-budget indies, this is at least an admittedly decent packaging. F (Movie) C+ (Disc)