Director: William Chaffin
Year: 2022
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Returning home from college, a troubled woman learns her strange dreams depicting herself killing her friends has turned true when they start happening for real, and after looking into the history of the dreams finds the demonic being at the center of everything and races to stop it from hurting her friends.
Review:
For the most part, this was quite a bit better than expected. One of the better features here comes from the rather enjoyable setup here that manages to offer up the kind of platform required for the type of material here. The backstory involving the series of issues present, from her troubled relationship with the family to the dreams existing for years previously and only started getting more troubling in recent times that’s all come together into a somewhat strong building block. That the entire thing cleverly manages to switch up the target here from several distinct possibilities, with her dreaming of the encounters to take place before switching over into a mental disorder until finally revealing the truth with a dark spirit haunting her for a family secret that brings everything together quite nicely. It’s quite intricate and manages to get a lot more out of this than initially expected.
That lets the film come off rather nicely with some intriguing scenes of the spirit coming for her and offering a series of generally enjoyable encounters. The early series of scenes revolve around her dreaming of the demon murdering her friends which are quite fun and have a chilling impact due to the setup established that the scenes carry out in the real world. Likewise, other encounters include the confrontations at the psychiatrist’s office and at home against her dad which set the stage for the finale where they finally have the battle at the end with the possessed figure causing everything. That leads to some fun in the finale where their big encounter might come off a bit muted than what it should’ve been but still comes off rather fun in this kind of effort that can be a bit of a downgrade from what it built up but has a lot to like about it.
There are some minor issues to be had with this one. One of the biggest factors here is the series of hoops this jumps through in order to get the story spelled out. It skips over several rather big plot points to get the entire purpose spelled out as soon as possible which makes the scenes feel entirely clumsy and awkward as the initial meeting between her and the priest manages to jump around to get these big plot points revealed in one meeting an unrealistic manner as if the purpose was to get everything out as quickly as possible. The other issue here is that this all leads to a somewhat underwhelming first half that spends a lot of time building up the storyline about her past and troubled mental condition at the expense of suspenseful stalking or generally tense encounters as it takes a while to get everything going. The final half has a lot to like, but the pace to get there isn’t as exciting as some would like which can end up hurting this one for viewers.
Overview: ***.5/5
A highly enjoyable supernatural indie effort, that there’s a lot to like here overcomes the few problematic areas that manage to crop up in this one rather nicely. Those that appreciate this kind of style or approach taken here will have a lot to like here while only those that don’t care for this brand of indie feature will want to heed caution here.
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