Director: Christopher Wesley Moore
Year: 2022
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
After getting in trouble with their family, a teen and her brother are sent to a secluded camp with other problematic teens for converting them to religion, but when they realize the tactics aren't the holiest in origin must try to convince the remaining guests to leave before it's too late.
Review:
There was a lot to like with this one. Among the better features here is the highly engrossing setup that paints their arrival at the facility in a strong way. The dynamic on display at the house, with the intense religious imposition onto others with his own beliefs towards how he wants the family to behave despite how the rest of the family acts including the questioning how the whole affair started or the inability to follow along with his regimented idea of how a family acts, get this going along nicely. That it's so hard to feel any sense of sympathy for the parents and instead derives plenty of intrigue towards the kids instead of for their plight makes this one rather interesting.
Once they get to the retreat, there's a lot to like here with the film opting to work with the concept of the owner being the secretly corrupt and improper leader while trying to maintain a sense of prim and proper status. Spending the time to ensure the other guests there are hammered with the sense of her desired values with a strict and severe punishment system ready to be introduced at the slightest provocation, the setup on display here works incredibly well for this type of effort. That there's enough going on with these rules and the cruel kills she enacts to keep the ploy going about trying to save them has quite a lot to like leading into the fun finale.
That's the biggest factor to this one as the series of encounters and confrontations that emerge has a lot to enjoy. Getting the big reveal out about the truth behind the leader and what she was really doing with the unruly participants allows this one to generate a lot of fun back-and-forth encounters here involving the last-ditch efforts to kill off the group. That includes the chases around the house or the final brawl that manages to include some pretty brutal moments that offer up some more bloodshed than expected to go along with the really enjoyable action to take place. These elements are enough to hold this one up for the most part.
It does have a few minor drawbacks that affect this one. The main one is the rather obvious sense of padding that goes on here, making a film like this last far longer than it should. This is based mainly on the suspense scenes showing the group around the camp trying to sneak around the facility or look into something that doesn't make sense about one of her stories which lasts way too long, although that also takes into account several scenes involving the love story with the handyman which also falls into that category. The last sequence that falls into that, which is a big issue separately, is the overlong finale that reads as a massively stupid move by characters that had displayed far more of that to that point while also running on too long for its own good. These are the issues that bring it down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A generally enjoyable indie effort without too many factors that hold it down, this one comes off quite well for the most part even with those detriments that do make an impression. Give it a look if you enjoy this particular style of film or if you're a fan of the creative crew, while most others should heed caution with this one.
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