Director: Mickey Keating
Year: 2022
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
After being informed of a pressing emergency, a woman and her boyfriend return to her hometown to investigate the claims of her mother's grave being desecrated, but the longer they stay the more convinced something otherworldly is inhabiting the island and must solve the mystery to get away alive.
Review:
For the most part, this was a rather solid if troublesome effort. When this one works is due to the rather effective atmosphere of unease and discomfort established around the island. The general look of the area is perfect for this kind of mysterious build-up, with the entire area covered in fog from the gloomy cemetery to the rather bizarrely-deserted streets in town that focus on her running around trying to figure out the reason why she's there. The lack of answers about what's happening around her, the behavior of the locals, and the various encounters she has with those left who are clearly hiding something and lying about what's going on which all give this one a rather unnerving setup the longer she's there and the more frantic she is to leave. With some decent confrontations involving something supernatural in the area occurring at select intervals around the latter half of the film and the full reveal of what's actually going on giving this a satisfying finish, there are some likable elements.
That said, there are some big issues present here which really drag the film down. The main detriment is the lack of explanation for what's going on, preferring to wallow in the mystery angle of everything rather than actually spend any time offering clues as to what's going on. The fact that there's so much time in the film spent running around trying to figure out how to get an answer out of someone which doesn't provide this one with any kind of enjoyable scenes during this time. With very little happening here and very few answers given about everything until the end, this one feels somewhat frustrating for the first two-thirds until there's a last-ditch effort at offering a setup for the events to come. That also manages to make this feel like an unnecessarily longer film than it really should, since this easily could've been trimmed down into an anthology film entry instead of being a standalone film, which are all the factors that hold this one down.
Overview: *.5/5
Underwhelming at best with its atmosphere and setup being the only real positives to be had with the vast majority of the flaws here holding this one back significantly, there’s very little to like with this one. Give it a shot if you’re more intrigued by the concept than anything else or if you’re a fan of the creative crew involved but most others should heed caution with this one.
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