Director: Harley Wallen
Year: 2023
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Vampire
Plot:
After finding a special object in the woods, a teen living with several other kids at a foster family house in the countryside slowly starts acting out of character the more she’s around this creature, and when the child service agent in charge comes across the horrific truth tries to help them stop the creature targeting them.
Review:
Overall, this was a rather fun and generally enjoyable genre effort. One of the better aspects of this one is the rather intriguing build-up that manages to be quite likable overall. Including a nice bout of Nordic folklore here involving the backstory of the vampire at the beginning to show his influence in the past with the hunting party trying to track him down and capture him which sets up the discovery in America later on. This leads into the later scenes at the house where his uncovering and slow-burn healing process provides a nice means of including this connection in the modern day as his decided influence grows much darker and more devious over time. The bits involving his corruption over the daughter to keep the streak going as it gains the power to leave and move on in the world are quite fun and allow this to take on some intriguing storylines along the middle section of the film.
This is carried over to the impressive vampire attacks that have a lot going for them. The main part of this is the storyline about his corrupting the daughter as this all comes off rather nicely involving the darker, more reclusive, and disengaged attitude while not being bothered to care about the world around her that flies in stark contrast to who she was before. The concurrent attacks on others around the area to generate the kind of power it needs to get stronger are generally more dramatic than anything but are still intriguing enough to offer up some solid scenes throughout here as it all prepares itself for the finale when it shows the creature attacking the house and bringing about some fine confrontations with the disbelieving members of the family that are quite chilling and suspenseful involving some nice bloodshed and action along the way. Overall, these are all enough to bring this one up quite a lot.
There are some issues that hold it down. The main issue to be had with the film is the generally slow build-up to the vampire as there’s quite a lot to deal with the bland storyline about how the family is abusing their foster children. While it enables everything to come together quite nicely, a lot of these scenes involving the way the parents are dismissive of everything she tells them, the needless subplot about the detective trying to recruit the social worker to join him at a new job, or their burgeoning relationship that’s shown throughout here where the two of them chat and hang out several times. It all ends up making the vampire’s presence come about a bit later than expected and feels quite sluggish to get started. There’s also a bit to this one where the daughter’s failure to not notice anything wrong with the vampire makes her look more stupid than earnest due to the obvious malevolent energy of the creature and this is somewhat unbelievable. These all end up bringing it down overall.
Overview: ***/5
A generally fun if somewhat problematic genre effort, there’s more than enough to like here even if some of the issues here do manage to bring it down quite a bit. Those who are intrigued by the material, appreciate this style of genre effort, or are fans of the creative crew will be the main target for this one while most others should heed caution with this one.
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