Director: Jon D. Wagner
Year: 2023
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Ghosts
Plot:
Trying to improve her mental health, a woman vlogging her experiences traveling around the country decides to take a vacation at a remote cabin in the woods where she can continue her journey, but the more she stays the more she’s convinced someone is haunting the cabin trying to uncover a shocking secret.
Review:
Overall, there’s a lot to like with this one. Among the better features with this one is the solid and highly enjoyable setup that makes for a highly effective chamber piece to play out. The opening introduction to her life and career, vlogging the experiences she has out on the road traveling around the country and seeing new people as a means of helping her cope with everything going on around her which leads nicely into the ditching of the van for the cabin lifestyle and what transpires there. Getting enough hints of something having happened at the location with the brief bit involving the girls’ accident at the location previously and the sudden bits of content through freaky hallucinations or ghostly whispers, there’s a genuinely solid starting point at play here to give everything a credible enough opening to things.
That allows the film to get quite enjoyable as it goes along that develops into the investigation of the ghost. As the incidents start to get more intense leading to the quest to find out what happened to her and even bringing her friend into the situation, this one moves into an entirely enjoyable series of confrontations based on the unraveling mystery that’s slowly going in a different direction than expected as it brings about a newfound intrigue over the origin of the accident. It leads incredibly well into the finale where the series of reveals about what’s been going on that signals into the crazed finale that has quite a bit to like here with a fantastic twist reveal that’s slightly obvious is still integrated well with some fun reveals. These are enough to make for a fun time.
The film does have some issues that hold it down. The biggest drawback here is the generally lackluster pacing that comes into play once she arrives at the cabin and starts looking into the history of the ghost. A lot of this is necessary with the way this starts to build to the twist reveal in the end, there’s still no reason for the pacing to slow to a crawl during these scenes of looking at newspaper clippings, investigating the residents of town or hanging around the cabin hallucinating about the ghost. It’s up a lot of the pacing by not having a lot of ghost action either which is the other factor against this one as the whole idea of the ghost trying to bring about the awareness of it’s death means it doesn’t actively terrorize or kill others so these areas are what bring this one down.
Overview: ***/5
A fun enough if somewhat flawed indie effort, this one manages to have a lot to like which is oftentimes enough to overcome the big flaws featured here. Those who appreciate the style or approach to this one will be the ones to like this one the most while those who aren’t into these factors should heed caution.
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