Director: Guillaume Beylard and Fabrice Martin
Year: 2017
Country: France
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Troubled by a nightmarish past, a man and his sister are driven to their ancestral home to recount the mysteries surrounding their family’s sordid past, but when they discover a gateway to another dimension their ancestor uncovered the group of bank-robbers stranded in the area become the least of their worries.
Review:
This one was a decent if somewhat problematic effort. When this one tries to unleash its main horror scares is when it stands out the best, offering up solid if unspectacular low-budget indie scares. The idea of the voices in her head constantly pulling at her sanity, the continuous dreams of the scarred family members coming for her or the different occurrences of windows or doors flying open that lead her to believe someone is in the house with them come off as incredibly familiar and routine yet still generate a somewhat effective atmosphere here. The later scenes of the mysterious specters attacking the gangsters outside in the ruins of the abandoned village, an encounter with a demonic being in the study or their zombie-like advances throughout the house bring about some tense moments as well.
As well, that leads into the fun second half where the survivors of these attacks are forced into the arcane dimensional portal and come face-to-face with the demonic creatures at the center of the invasion. Taking the different revelations that have been found out as for how the creatures have managed to gain access to our dimension, the full-on fun series of encounters featured here with the zombified victims that have been taken previously now coming for them. There’s a lot of fun to be had with these action-packed scenes and the strong make-up for the zombie creatures as well as the means of taking them out really pick this one up nicely. With a great twist in the finale involving the origins of the curse and what happens to them, the film does manage to include some enjoyable aspects.
There are a few big problems with this one. One of the main problems here is the fact that there’s such a clumsy and awkward setup here that really highlights it’s low-budget origins. The conversation the two have as an excuse to look into their family’s past and what their uncle was involved with is just riddled with bizarre plot setups and utterly bizarre mannerisms to bring the idea around as to what they’re trying to accomplish that it doesn’t seem like a real conversation that would happen between a brother and sister. As well, other scenes like their wandering around the house getting to know the sources of all the different noises she thinks she hears or the bartering with the criminals about their true intentions being at the house just tend to come off as haphazardly disjointed and jarring that it’s distracting.
The other issue here is the decidedly obvious low-budget look and feel that runs rampant here that might turn some off to the film. The overly-digitized look that glosses over the film, as if being edited through a strange filter that attempts a more cinematic scope that doesn’t really warrant that kind of tone. Instead of imparting a sense of grandeur to the material, it comes off with this irritating, washed-out color scheme that rarely looks the part for adding a sense of believability to the location. On top of that, the CGI here is way too abundant, from the attempts at mangling the features on the demons to their energy displays and even the over-the-top means of featuring the transportations into other worlds which become quite comical due to the limited scope. These here are what drag this one down.
Overview: **.5/5
While it tries to bite off more than it can chew in terms of its limited budget attempting a far grander scale than it could pull off, the action and atmosphere here do enough to counteract that so it’s somewhat watchable enough at least. Those with an appreciation for these kinds of low-budget films or are intrigued by what’s happening here can do far worse than this one, but those with the exact opposite feelings should heed caution overall.
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