Director: Michael P. Blevins
Year: 2021
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Psychological
Plot:
After attempting to repair his yard, a man uncovers a strange box filled with money and a dead body inside, and after spending some of the money finds himself haunted by the figure found with the money which causes him to question his sanity as the events begin to disrupt his life.
Review:
This was a pretty decent but highly flawed effort. Among its better qualities is the rather fun nature in which this one comes about setting up its premise and eventual setup to be put in play later. The innocent nature of the discovery of the box and its contents, uncovering them while preparing a section of the yard during a fi-up session, comes off quite nicely and believably since there’s not anything unnatural or impossible about it. The circumstances are anything any homeowner could potentially come across and experience. When this in turn leads to the fun discovery of the series of hauntings and encounters that come about with him believing that the corpse found inside is still alive creates a highly impressive atmosphere as he becomes increasingly frazzled and paranoid following each of the encounters as they build up in intensity. It does enhance the tempo of the final half rather nicely, but it’s all that really holds this one up.
There are a few issues here. The main problem is the fact that so much of this one is dependent on the idea of him hiding the money with a guilty conscience about reporting it and the dead body that anything that occurs around him is supernatural. So much of this one is based on him being jumpy at shadows or cats screeching off in the distance or even more innocuous aspects that it just wears thin after a while with so many of these false jump-scares turning out to be nothing that it lessens the impact of the actual scares later on. Even worse, because of the repetitious manner of these scenes playing out the film’s first half is quite dull and predictable even with all these supernatural hauntings taking place.
The other issue here is the rather bizarre structure that tends to highlight several factors that expose his plans. The constant back-and-forth nature of constantly burying stuff inside the box only to have to dig it back up several times over meaning it would’ve been obvious what he was doing to his neighbors constantly seeing him have to dig up the same part of his yard.it makes sense that he has to keep doing it due to his mental snap but the fact that no one notices this factor is quite strange. As well, there’s also the issue of the finale making no real sense, injecting a rather odd amount of action that comes off somewhat oddly with little point and context which highlights a highly underwhelming and confusing ending that doesn’t come off with any kind of explanation for what’s happening. These all end up lowering the film for the most part.
Overview: **/5
A watchable but generally unimpressive entry undone by some troublesome writing and uninteresting setups, that this tries to do something different with its setup will be largely dependent on a viewers’ preference. Those who go for these kinds of psychological genre films or curious about the film’s style might be impressed with this one, while those who aren’t as interested in the format or turned off by the flaws should heed caution.
Comments
Post a Comment