Director: David Kerr
Year: 2023
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Home Invasion
Plot:
Gathering together for a family reunion, a family meets at a remote house in the countryside for a special dinner celebration only to find the festivities interrupted by a vicious gang of intruders forcing them to play a deadly life-or-death game to escape but a further intruder may disrupt everyone’s plans.
Review:
This was a fun and enjoyable slasher effort. One of the film's better elements here comes from the rather solid setup that takes place here. With the whole affair coming about nicely with the events of the cold open setting up the gang of intruders and how they operate featuring the games and cruel twists that come about, this sets up the intruders and their malevolent ways quite nicely. While this all plays out, the rest of the setup here features the trials and tribulations of the family that ranges from unfaithfulness to secretive relationships and ulterior motives to everything going on with them that all provide a great setup to this one.
That provides the film with a lot of fun to be had once it gets to the invasion where the intruders start taking over the house. Utilizing plenty of rather effective and brutal stalking scenes of the family being targeted in the house under the guise of a demented series of games, this develops a slew of effective and suspenseful sequences with the group trying to make their way through the night. With encounters spread liberally throughout the house and managing to bring about a lot of encounters with pretty much everyone involved, it adds quite a bit to the film as that allows this one to dive into a rather brutal series of kills that feature quite a lot of great gore. Overall, these factors provide this with quite a lot to like about it.
There are several small factors to hold this down. One of the most obvious flaws here is the rather unlikable main family that takes a lot of the interest out of the main section of the film. Again believing that a bunch of people spending time yelling at each for petty problems and general douchebaggery behavior is supposed to make them sympathetic, instead, it does the opposite and causes a bit of a struggle to care about them going forward. As well, there’s also very little about the invading group that makes sense with little to no explanation for who they are, what their purpose is, why they targeted the group, or how it all works together with the other killer in the area which doesn’t really affect it that much but does hold it back slightly.
Overview: ****/5
An overall enjoyable and effective indie home invasion slasher, this one works well at what it sets out to do even with some slight issues bringing it down. Those that enjoy this type of indie fare, are general fans of this type of slasher in general, or have followed the creative crew will have a lot to like here while those that are turned off by these features should heed caution with this one.
Comments
Post a Comment