Josh Ruben Heads Deep Into the Woods for Wilderness Reform Adaptation
Josh Ruben clearly refuses to take a holiday. After opening the year with the slasher comedy Heart Eyes, he has already marched straight into his next project. Deadline revealed that Paramount has tapped Ruben to direct a film based on the Matt Query and Harrison Query novel Wilderness Reform, a story that asks the ancient question every genre fan secretly loves. What if summer camp was run by people who should absolutely never be in charge of children.
The film takes place at a wilderness reform camp for troubled teens, which sounds wholesome until the part where people start vanishing and the promised life lessons begin leaning heavily toward run for your life. This is not the usual program of ropes courses, team building exercises and counsellors who smile a little too much. According to early details from Deadline, the camp in Wilderness Reform is the sort of place where the woods watch back and the adults behave like motivational speakers who have read one too many cursed self help books.
Ruben is overseeing a script from Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, the duo behind Knock at the Cabin. If their previous work is any indication, we may expect a story that starts calm, grows tense and then erupts into sheer panic once the trees begin whispering. Pet Sematary Bloodlines writer director Lindsey Beer is producing the film through her company Lab Brew, which currently holds a first look partnership with Paramount. She is joined by producer Scott Glassgold of 12:01 Films, who has made a career out of championing speculative genre projects long before they explode into full franchises.
The novel, published last year by Atria and Emily Bestler Books, gives a clearer picture of what Ruben will be adapting. Thirteen year old Ben is sent to the camp by a juvenile court judge, and he learns almost immediately that something is off. The counselors are incredibly cheerful, almost eerily so, the kind of enthusiastic adults who make you wonder if they blink. The camp itself is planted at the edge of the vast Montana wilderness, which is always a promising setting when you want things to go terribly wrong.
Ben soon realises that the boys sharing his cabin are far more capable than the system gives them credit for. They each possess a specific skill that could help them uncover whatever is festering beneath the surface of the camp. The deeper the boys dig, the more the hidden threat begins to stir, and naturally it wants to stop them before they tell someone in authority that their summer program appears to be run by a cryptid.
This marks a very natural next step for Ruben. Before Heart Eyes, he earned rave attention with Werewolves Within in 2021, a horror comedy that proved you do not need a massive budget to create a crowd pleaser. Before that, he directed and starred in Scare Me in 2020, a small and playful story about writers battling their own worst impulses in a cabin that should have been listed on a cursed real estate register. His films always mix character driven comedy with creeping dread, which makes him an ideal match for a story about teenagers who must use their wits to survive something much larger, much stranger and much more organised than they expected.
With Ruben directing, Beer producing and the Query brothers’ eerie story at the core, Wilderness Reform has the potential to sit nicely beside the growing list of wilderness horror tales that make you suspicious of outdoor activities. Whether the film leans toward psychological terror, creature heavy chaos or the classic scenario of never trust anyone wearing a polo shirt and a nametag, one thing is certain. Summer camp is about to become a place where the rulebook is the first thing to die.
More details will surface once production moves forward, but for now, horror fans can enjoy the simple pleasure of knowing Ruben is once again dragging us into the woods. And if his filmography has taught us anything, it is that we should not get too attached to anyone who smiles at the campfire for a little too long.
