Director: Elizabeta Vidovic and Kathryn Michelle
Year: 2021
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Living with a terrible family curse, a family of witches trying to escape the pressures of the curse affecting them by celebrating a special wedding finds their festivities altered by the curse coming to play and must try to find a way of stopping it before it consumes them all.
Review:
There’s quite a lot to like with this one. Among the more enjoyable factors here concerns the setup involving the highly-involved and complex origins of the traditions present in this universe. Establishing a community involving the passing down of traditions from one generation through the use of family and sacrifices, the whole backstory involved here bringing these aspects together into play while also doling out the use of witchcraft and black magic that plays a central part of the film. This comes into play nicely as well with the various backstories that are given including the concept of how the curse came to be placed on the family, why they’re as secretive as they are, and how the family behaves towards each other due to these issues offers a great setup that lets the supernatural activity present here feel as involved and chilling as it does.
With this established, the film brings about a highly enjoyable and somewhat chilling series of setpieces centered around the supernatural aspects of this one. Knowing the original intent behind the curse on the family means that several of the original scenes here, from the scenes of the spiked thorns moving on their own, the figures in the background looking over them whenever the family members are on their own or the various dream sequences showing them succumbing to the influences of the past add a nice chilling quality to this one. The maladies and inflictions that are brought into play by the supernatural forces here offer up some low-key yet still impressive ideas here that keep the gore lower than expected but still quite chilling with the way they all play out. Combined with some great jump-scares and tension in the finale when the curse has been fulfilled, these manage to give this one a lot to like about it.
That said, there are some issues to be had here. The main issue with the film is that, because it spends as much time as it does spelling out the various storylines and subplots that are important at grounding the story being told, the pacing here is slightly sluggish and slow at times. Filled with the revelations involving who’s secretly mad at who, the need to be as low-key as they are and how the tensions have arisen due to the situation they’re in, this one takes a while before it finally gets all the pieces revealed and the unsettling nature found here is brought into play. It does unfortunately make this somewhat sluggish to the point where this one’s low-key nature that’s brought about solely due to the low budget featured here so that even the action at the end does come off as too little too late. However, none of that really affects the film much due to the other positives here.
Overview: ***.5/5
A highly enjoyable low-budget genre effort that gets a lot right but does have a few small issues present, for the most part, this one offers up quite a lot of positives to make for an enjoyable indie effort. Give this a look if you're a fan of these kinds of drama-centered genre efforts or interested in the material here, while those looking for more explicit fare or don't appreciate the positives here might want to heed caution.
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