Director: Garth Maxwell
Year: 1993
Country: New Zealand
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Growing up separated as young kids, a boy and his sister eventually find themselves years later as teens having been adopted into vastly different families, but when his psychotic upbringing eventually causes him to snap they go on the run to help him while avoiding his family members out to seek revenge.
Review:
Overall, this one was pretty disappointing and underwhelming. The only good factors here really stem from the series of scenes that revolve around setting up the revenge later on. His life on the farm and the abuse he suffered is all a great setup for the hypnosis-fueled series of accidents that are passed off as his parents’ deaths create a rather strong first-half while generating the proper build-up required for the scenes later on featuring the girls coming back for revenge. This offers some decent scenes with them chasing the two around the area leading to the finale that brings about some fun chases around the property and getting some solid gore once her powers are finally brought to the forefront. It's really some of the only factors that make this one likable.
There were quite a few issues with this one. One of the biggest problems with this one is the idea of this one being so heavy-handed with its setup that there’s so little interest in what’s happening. Despite the creation of an intriguing setup involving their vastly different lives and the quest to get back together, very little here becomes interesting due to the way this all becomes presented. As the differences with their lies growing up are immediately clear and don’t stand up to the kind of fascination it thinks it has. The discrepancies in their upbringing and how different it was for them to be brought up is all a tired cliche anyway and don’t generate much in the way of excitement for a genre film. Most of it is all played in a serene and maudlin approach that comes about through their reunion and the troubled nature of everything, failing to make any kind of genuine impression overall.
This lack of interest also applies to the films’ attempt at scares which are incredibly troubling and just plain uninteresting. Since he’s such an unsocial psychotic nutcase that snaps at everything and everyone around him in the most unrealistic manner possible, it’s not at all feasible to look at him as a sympathetic figure during his attempts to kill off the people around him for what happened in his life. This causes a series of utterly underwhelming and forgettable scenes that despite the attempt at raising the energy featured within the film make no sense as to why they would play out as they do with her helping him perform these actions in front of her or driving away everyone in her life just because he’s too unstable to be around. Frankly, these really hold this one down the most.
Overview: 0.5/5
With very few interesting aspects and tons of flaws to be had with the lack of entertaining features on display, this is a barely watchable genre effort that's not worth the time for most out there. Really only give this a look if you're a fan of these drama-heavy genre efforts or intrigued by the creative crew but most others won't be won over by this one and should avoid outright.
This review ran as part of our coverage of the 2021 edition of the virtual Nightstream Film Festival. Click the banner below to check out the other reviews for our coverage:
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