Director: Frank Sabatella
Year: 2019
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Vampire
Plot:
Living with an abusive grandfather, a bullied teen trying to get out of his small-town without getting into confrontations with a local bully finds that a mysterious, deadly creature has taken residence in a shed in his backyard, and after trapping it decides to use it to take care of his bully problems.
Review:
There ended up being quite a lot to love here. Among the best attributes to this one is a fantastic backstory bringing together numerous intriguing subplots into the mix. The main teens’ tragic family history and being forced to live with a relative who doesn’t want him and tries raising him to his old-school ideas tells us quite a bit about their history together, much in the same way the intricate web of backstories relating to their high-school lives is carried out. Interconnecting not only the bullies that have tormented him and his best friend for years that has also hooked up repeatedly with his best friend who he has a crush on, these interlocking stories give strong emotional resonance to everything while also leading into each other in a way that showcases incredibly strong writing as well as creativity to accomplish this.
There’s also a lot of great work here with the horror segments. Opening up with the creature hunting a victim through the woods and attacking him only to be saved by a sheer coincidence yet realize he’s become afflicted with the curse is a strong start by giving us an idea about the beast and some of its characteristics to start things out. As well, it also provides an excuse as to how it ended up in the shed where his first few encounters provide some chilling and shocking moments of the creature attacking his family in order to set up the later scenes where they lead people to the shed inadvertently. That these are short, intense and brutal works just as well as the traditional stalking scenes throughout the house at the end that’s filled with suspenseful searching, gore-filled kills and tons of action which really ends this one on a high note.
However, the film scores the most with the incredibly complex theme of vengeance carried out against tormentors. This one rightfully brings up the idea almost immediately upon the realization of the creatures’ presence about using it to get revenge on the bullies by leading them into the shed, and it’s quickly rebuffed as unethical. Still, the unyielding desire to go so far as to willfully ignore him and do it anyway raises plenty of strong issues about the morality of this since that inevitably leads to the creature getting free through the simple-minded and shortsighted desire for all-consuming revenge. That lack of logic and reasoning is a hurdle for some to get over, while a lame and ham-fisted back-and-forth confrontation that relies more on quippy puns than actual legit fighting to stop the creature could be considered an issue yet none of these are really that detrimental.
Overview: ****.5/5
A strong and intelligent genre offering that manages to tell an enjoyable story while also incorporating plenty of incredible horror action along the way, there’s not much beyond minor gripes which don’t even become that detrimental. This is highly recommended to all those that prefer strong, emotional resonances in their genre fare or the curious out there, while there isn’t much here to disappoint most traditional fans either.
This review was a part of our coverage of the 2019 edition of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. Click below to see all of our coverage of the event:
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