Director: Nicholas Woods
Year: 2019
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Heading out into the woods, a woman and a group of friends looking for her missing sister stumble upon a mysterious cabin where they think she hid out, and upon searching the area for her find the world they’ve stumbled into an alternate dimension just like her sister did and must find a way to get out of the world alive.
Review:
This was quite an enjoyable enough effort. One of the better features presented here is the rather intriguing mythology that's utilized here for explaining the central concept here. The idea of traveling to the specific part of the woods and going through the exact motions that are required of them that we see from the special trinkets that have to be worn to the detailed steps they have to undertake manages to give off a wholly enjoyable backstory to the film. These early scenes in the woods where they nonchalantly follow the instructions not realizing what's going on and getting into deeper trouble with their journey into the woods due to that is a big part of what makes this one fun with this early starting point.
Once in that section of the woods, the creepiness intensifies as the mystery builds itself rather nicely. The series of mysteries surrounding the central shack they stumble across the mysterious objects inside like the continuously disappearing figures around the cabin or the signatures in the sign-in ledger getting cut off at a specific date which goes hand-in-hand with the constant mentions of how the time never changes that makes for a really enjoyable and disorienting experience. The idea of the forest is home to a specific breed of creatures that manage to cause such vivid hallucinations that are shown here including the strange deformed beings appearing behind people or causing them to turn on each other which gives this plenty of strong gore and kills. These here are what hold the film up overall.
There are a few major issues to be had here. The main problem on display is the absolutely banal and boring build-up that makes this one so dull to get through it makes the first half to this one. Featuring the conversations in the bar about the mode of traveling to the cabin to the group holding up the hike to bust on each other or take drugs, the film takes way too long to get the group at the central cabin where everything starts going wrong. That the pacing here is just stiff and rather bland to get though causes this one to be much longer than it needs to be, which isn’t helped at all by the unnecessary scenes about them not trusting her for lying to them that serve no purpose than to give this a longer running time.
The other main flaw here is the utterly terrible and chaotic mess that arises from the final half. With a series of nonsensical actions about who’s possessed and who’s not leading to complete confusion over the true nature of each individual featured on-screen to the completely random group of hunters that show up to get started on a plotline involving them hunting down the creatures in the different worlds and how to access it all that could’ve provided more fodder for different movies than just a throwaway line in a single scene. All of this could’ve been given more time to flesh itself out instead of being thrown together into this jumbled, confused narrative at the end that undoes so much of the film’s positives until then. These here are what really hold this one back the most.
Overview: ***/5
While it’s not the greatest ending at all to this type of film with most of the issues arising at that point, the fact that there are still enough positives on display elsewhere manages to make this one worthwhile and watchable. Give it a shot if you’re a fan of these low-budget indie efforts or if you believe the flaws won’t be as distracting, but those that aren’t into this style of a film should heed caution.
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