Director: Jackson Batchelor
Year: 2021
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
As the rest of Britain votes on Brexit, a woman brings several friends home to visit her family and tries to keep the peace until they find a series of strange reports depicting a rash of feral humanoid-pig-like creatures running loose in the area and must protect themselves when it hits close to home.
Review:
There was a lot to like with this one. One of the more enjoyable features here is the strongly topical and creative story that brings together some unique elements. Starting off with the recent political news of the day regarding the important voting to take place in the country, the ability to weave that around a familiar genre-tale involving the return to a family home and noticing something is off about the situation but unable to say why creates a rather uneasy feeling. Coming together with the conversations about what each of the group decides on the situation or trying to espouse their views calmly and reasonably all form a fun setup to the later proceedings.
This comes to pass rather nicely as the switchover into the horror elements come rather well. While trying to debate their policies and beliefs, their sudden notice of the neighbors' behavior and outburst signals a rather enjoyable turn where the debates shift into a series of conversations and absent-minded debates about what's going on and how it affects everyone which eerily mirrors real-life conversations at the moment. Once the shift occurs and we get some impressive confrontations in the house along with some shocking twists about who gets turned and when, the film picks up considerably with the panic and unease of the situation growing while realizing that the increasing number of creatures found outside, also highlighting the fine make-up and the few gore effects. These are what hold this one up for the most part.
There isn't much to dislike, and what's there isn't too detrimental anyway. The main issue is the somewhat endless conversations about the source of what's going on that really go nowhere. As is rightfully pointed out in the conversations, nobody really knows what's going on which means the conversations tend to go on in completely uninformed matters completely undermining what's happening by ignoring the situation at hand. As well, the sudden nature of the ending coming on as abrupt as it does seems somewhat jarring rather than shocking as it was intended. Both of these factors aren't really detrimental but do stand out as being somewhat flawed efforts about it.
Overview: ***.5/5
A solid and enjoyable topical genre effort that doesn’t have too much in the way of flaws as those issues aren’t bad, this one comes off rather nicely with plenty of likable qualities for indie genre fans. It’s highly recommended to fans of the studio’s output or those who generally enjoy these kinds of indie efforts as a whole, while others who aren’t into the style should heed caution.
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