Director: Roxanne Benjamin
Year: 2023
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Evil Kids
Plot:
Taking a trip together, two families enjoying their wilderness trip together with their children start to become unnerved when their kids' behavior starts to alert one of the group to something wrong with the kids and tries to convince them of his beliefs before anything can happen on the trip.
Review:
Overall, this was a pretty solid if unremarkable effort. One of the better features here is the overall solid setup that provides a rather intriguing take on the classic formula with a more overtly terrifying touch. The whole point of the remote building and the strange pit inside leads to a rather fine concept here involving the idea of the area corrupting the children with the way the kids immediately react with bloody noses and nearly-catatonic states after being in contact which is taken to extremes once they get back to the cabin as everything gets turned upside down the following morning. The return trip to the pit and what transpires there setting up the second half of this one is quite fun while also giving a great motivation for the encounters in the second half.
That leads into the other fun part of this one in the second half building up to the series of encounters with the deranged children. Focusing on him being convinced something is wrong but failing to get anyone else to see him, there's a lot to like here as what goes on is all cleverly misconstrued as psychosis-induced hallucinations that bring out the hidden animosities within the group. This all leads to a fine finale as the real extent of the plan is revealed and how it all ties into their behavior, this is quite brutal and fun with the cat-and-mouse confrontations leading to some fun moments here involving the full reveal of everything and some decent gore to top it all off which make for some positive points here.
There are some big issues to keep this one down. One of the biggest issues here is the rather bland second half here which focuses on the group going through the details of their behavioral changes that never really feels overtly malicious. Relying on them taunting and teasing him about what's really going on and not as much on the kids doing anything to make it obvious, the tempo of this one slows to a crawl which really stalls the creepiness as the sideplot about his mental illness causing a potential source for the beliefs he offers. This is a bit of a cheat in how it derails conversations to the point of ignoring how the characteristics are off despite them not being malevolent which is a big issue here.
The last factor against this one is the highly underwhelming lack of explanations for anything that's going on here which makes for a confusing time here. Rather than offer up anything about the purpose of the change as for what's going on with the children being swapped out with exact duplicates under the pit's influence, if they're the same people just being controlled by something or if there's another possible explanation for what's happening. Even where the pit came from and what's going on inside is a complete mystery so that takes a lot of the big fear out of the film. As well, the film also ends abruptly just a few seconds before it should've which robs the climax of its punch as even a sound effect would have been better than nothing. These factors all manage to hold this one down for the most part.
Overview: ***/5
An overall fun if flawed genre effort, this one manages to be a decidedly average entry without really doing anything spectacularly wrong or overly impressive leaving it as such. Those that enjoy this type of feature, are fans of the creative crew, or are just generally curious about it might have a lot to like here while most others that don't enjoy those factors should heed caution here.
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