Director: Kevin Kölsch, Dennis Widmyer
Year: 2019
Country: USA/Canada
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Moving to a quiet Maine town, a doctor and his family try to get settled into their new home, but when an accident threatens to shatter their lives he puts his knowledge of a secret local burial ground to use only to thrust his family into a far darker nightmare when it starts to turn against him.
Review:
This one wasn’t so bad but was pretty troubling. Among the more enjoyable aspects here is the setup of the main burial ground which is hidden away in the woods. These scenes are generally atmospheric, showing off the tranquility of nature very well with the scenes of the kids going through the woods or the daughter investigating on her own which makes for some atmospheric settings. As well, the film works incredibly well with the resurrection of the various beings that come back, providing some creepy elements and aspects here from the antics of the returning cat attacking the family and trying to covertly get rid of it to the stalking by the resurrected kid both on the neighbor in his house or the returning family when they come back at the end. These offer up some great action that helps to enhance the overarching theme of his own desperation to save them by going to the lengths he does to keep them together, which is all that really works here.
There are a few issues within the film. The biggest obstacle to overcome is the general unreliability of anything that takes place in the town. There’s very little about the house being so close to the highway with trucks speeding by in such a residential area which is nothing more than easy foreshadowing for what’s to come later yet doesn’t have any kind of realistic notion that any sane driver would pull off. Likewise, the small-town appearance and attitude are completely glossed over and underwhelming with very little about the look and feel of anything here looking anywhere close to that type of setting, making for a very tough immersion into this one. On top of that, there’s no explanation for how it all works, from the cemetery’s ability to raise them from the dead to what’s keeping the family at the house to why they’re not able to notice the changes around them when the reanimated beings start acting weird despite not having any prior motivation to behave that way.
The other real issue here is the film’s inability to effectively utilize any of its horror elements with any kind of merit. The main aspect of the film half involves the mothers’ fear of death through her past experiences with her ill sister, an element of the film with absolutely no scares present here because of the ineffectual flashbacks. They’re over so quick and manage to gloss over any kind of normal rationale for being scared as the few glimpses don’t generate anything while the later attempt to use that to build a phobia of cabinets is laughably absurd and reeks of trying to shoehorn scares into the film. The haunted house elements that freak out the family and underwhelming and dropped completely after awhile while the finale’s ambiguous outcome seems to impart a feeling of incompleteness and a cheat more than anything. All told, these aspects are what hold the film down the most.
Overview: */5
A mostly underwhelming and not very scary effort to re-do the story while offering a few halfway decent watchable efforts at best, the film is a jumbled mess as a whole and doesn’t come off with any impact or resonance at all. It’s worth a one-time watch if you’re a fan of the creative side, not a fan of the original or curious about the project while those who feel the opposite of all these aspects won’t find much to like here.
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