Director: Padraig Reynolds
Year: 2020
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Moving back to her childhood home, a woman and her daughter trying to start their lives over start to believe someone or something is living on the farm with them, and once she learns of the existence of a humanoid creature targeting her daughter tries to defend her from the creatures.
Review:
On the whole, this one was pretty enjoyable. Among it’s better qualities is the rather strong atmosphere of the house, especially in the first half. The large rooms, numerous entrance points, and strange noises coming from inside that seem to move slowly by themselves just out of eyesight create a wholly chilling atmosphere to be in which is enhanced incredibly well with the scenes that come about later on. The fantastic tag-game they play in the cornfield is a superb highlight, especially with the strange lights appearing and then finding the daughter on the roof of the house in a time that would’ve been impossible to do on her own. The series of encounters they have with the strange lights appearing outside and inside is pretty creepy and chilling and give this one a strong, central mystery about what’s going on in the house that is quite entertaining.
The other enjoyable aspect to be had here is a solid and enjoyable final half that works solely on the pretense of the action present. Determined to rescue her daughter, she descends into the basement to start hunting them down when the distraction of chasing them around the upstairs part of the house leads nicely into the tense encounters underground where she manages to find her daughter held by the creatures. The race to free her and get out of the house from the rest of the creatures has some tense moments throughout here, and the final matter of dealing with them has a fine sense of excitement which gives this a lot to like. Along with some unique if impractical design work on the creatures and some decent gore, these here re what manages to keep this one enjoyable enough.
This one did have some big problems. A pretty big issue here is the disjointed and convoluted storyline that doesn’t make any sense at all. Managing to skip between various points in the storyline is incredibly poorly done, going with a flashback retelling for the first half then skipping around to the middle of a pivotal battle with the creatures with no setup or point to do so, causing the timeline to be completely messed up and all over the place. As well, the film seems to have a problem with spelling anything out, as the nosebleeds each of the victims succumb to are given gravitas and importance yet never get revealed, nor is there any explanation for where the creatures evolved from or how they’ve managed to avoid detection with an anatomy that begs otherwise. Alongside some wonky CGI and woeful character motivations, these here hold it down.
Overview: ***/5
While there are a few minor struggles here involving not spelling everything out or utilizing a unique-if-impractical creature, the rest of the film is a highly enjoyable and competently-made creature feature that has a lot to like. This is definitely for those that enjoy these kinds of sci-fi heavy creature features or fans of the creative crew, while those who don’t like this style should heed caution.
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