If after Sleepaway Camp you’re still willing to go into the woods, beware of Ticks.  Actually, for a direct to video movie, Ticks isn’t bad.  It has some production values and a story that, although very far fetched, keeps you watching.  It all begins with a group of inner-city kids going on a wilderness enrichment project.  They don’t know that some cash croppers growing marijuana have been using steroids to enhance the growth of the plants nearby the cabin.  The steroids leak onto some ticks who grow supersized and are out for blood.  The kids and their chaperones know none of this as they try to get into nature and away from their unhealthy urban lives with its crime and entitled situations.  The local sleazy drug lord, however, doesn’t like them too near his operation, and keeps an eye on them.  One of the drug growers is the first to be attacked.

The mutated ticks start out about the size of a hand.  They first attack the dog of  one of the kids, draining it of blood and killing it.  Then they go for people.  Although there’s nothing really new here, other than using ticks as the monsters, it’s a somewhat fast-paced film that satisfies the monster itch.  Only one of the kids actually dies, although several are bitten.  In keeping with the tropes of many American films, though, the one Black kid is the sole victim.  This could’ve been thought through a bit more carefully.  The only other deaths are, however, three white men—all of them associated with the drug growing operation.  A bit of humor keeps things from getting too heavy, but the fact is that ticks can be scary and it turns out that making them bigger, as tenacious as they are, can work to make them scarier.

If you’ve ever been bitten by a tick (only once, that I know of, in my case) you know they can be frightening in that they carry diseases.  In the movie, instead of Lyme their bite is, or can be, hallucinogenic.  This isn’t applied evenly, however, sometimes the bites do this, and that is used to build some tension and to resolve some issues.  In the end, though, it turns out like many of the young-people-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods movies.  I won’t tell you how it ends since you may decide to see it, if you’ve cheap like me, and have been hankering for another excuse not to spend a week in the woods.  You’re generally fine if you do rent a cabin, but it is always best to check for ticks.