Director: Anthony Hall
Year: 2021
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Arriving in a small town, a woman and her cousin return home to catch-up after being away for several years, and while they attempt to reminisce with each other they come to find out a savage killer tied to local lore is running around a party killing everyone there in revenge for what happened.
Review:
This was a pretty decent if somewhat enjoyable genre effort. Among its more likable qualities is the general setup of the film working through the history of the two and the small-town atmosphere present. Utilizing the type of urban legend that would run wild in a local setting such as this involving the incidents surrounding the young boy and the fate that befell him, the reluctance of the survivors to make sure it didn’t spread beyond the town and the general atmosphere of the town hidden with secrets goes a long way to set up the kind of storyline featured here. With the other storylines involving the group rekindling their romance or learning about their past behavior, it gives enough of a setup to where the brutal antics on display in the kill scenes do register here. The main party sequence featuring the rapid assault of attacks on the victims manages to get rather fun at times, giving away some decent aftermath shots and some solid action overall, all of which make this likable.
There are some issues to be had here. One of the biggest factors against this one is a completely rushed and underwhelming amount of horror action that tends to overshadow a lot of the activity within this one. With the overlong introduction involving the meeting between the cousins at the motel or the meetup at the diner leading to more time at her house meeting up with each other as well as the antics of their drunken friends at the party, these all manage to just slow the film down to the point of being sluggish and dull. Hardly any of this is the slightest bit interesting making us hang around these bland, unappealing people without much in the way of horror in the outskirts to make us fearful of anything happening to them since there are so few opportunities to remind ourselves that we’re actually in a genre effort in the first place.
As well, there’s also a rather disappointing quality to the horror scenes when they finally show up in that they’re barely visible at all. There tends to be a quality where they either take far too long to get to the point that it renders the scene meaningless or they’re so fast and darkly lit that it’s really hard to notice what’s happened leading to a generally less-than-stellar reaction to everything. The opening attack on the highway or the duplicitous lovers in the van carries on way too long while the neighbor getting ambushed in the shower is impossible to make out the actual outcome until much later. As well, the disturbingly obscure idea of the attacks being filmed as though they were shot with psychedelic lends with various filters, snaps and screenshots that it becomes too avant-garde to tell what’s happening and makes the film rather difficult to understand the best parts. Overall, these issues are what hold this one down the most.
Overview: */5
A generally underwhelming effort that doesn’t have a lot of action and what horror activity it does feature is somewhat hard to figure out what’s happening, there’s not much to like with this one. Really only get into this one if you’re a fan of the original or looking forward to these kinds of indie slashers, while most others out there should heed caution.
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