Horror Movie 'The Woods' Gets a Spooky Debut Trailer

Adam Wingard may not be a household name to casual movie fans. But the director has carved out a solid position in the genre world thanks to a host of recent indie hits, including 2011โ€™s house-party-gone-awry slasher movie Youโ€™re Next and 2014โ€™s John Carpenter-esque The Guest (not to mention his contributions to the horror anthologies V/H/S and The ABCs of Death). And from the looks of his latest, his mainstream breakout could arrive this September, when he delivers an all-out horror experience courtesy of Lionsgate.

Bolstered by phenomenal advance word-of-mouth (Time Out New Yorkโ€™s Joshua Rothkopf recently tweeted, โ€œYou may think youโ€™re ready for THE WOODS but youโ€™re not.โ€), The Woods is a found-footage effort about a group of college kids who embark on a camping trip, only to discover that theyโ€™re not the only ones in the forest. That set-up sounds pretty familiar, and the filmโ€™s camcorder-filtered style suggests a resemblance to the subgenreโ€™s granddaddy, 1999โ€™s The Blair Witch Project.

Nonetheless, as confirmed by its debut trailer above โ€” which offers little in the way of concrete plot details, but provides a great sense of the actionโ€™s ominous atmosphere โ€” thereโ€™s undoubtedly far more to The Woods than merely rehashing old scary-movie conventions. Between Wingardโ€™s pedigree and his recent Twitter proclamation that โ€œThis is my first full on โ€˜sh-t your pantsโ€™ horror film,โ€ itโ€™s quickly shaping up to be one of the fallโ€™s must-see efforts for those looking to get scared silly.

The Woods creeps into theaters on Sept.16.