Director: Eren Celeboglu, Ari Costa
Year: 2023
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
While trying to get through their life, the brother of a deadbeat family finds that a special knife relic he discovered grants him the ability to force others into playing life-or-death children's games against their will and must try to stop its effects when the outcomes turn deadly.
Review:
This was a rather disappointing if still watchable enough genre effort. Among the brighter spots here is the way this manages to provide the setup for the particular games to be played. The discovery of the knife while trying to get past his bullies and the way the spirits appear to torment him into getting his friends involved is a rather fun way to go about this, while the resolution of this tends to be handled with the main part of the film being his possessed state rampaging and slashing them in a fine fashion offering some brutal stalking scenes and plenty of nice gore. This is all done nicely enough with some fun moments to set up the finale where everything is brought about and wrapped up with the confrontation involving the spirit tormenting them that's quite likable overall to hold the film up for the most part.
There are some big problems with this one holding it down. The main drawback to be had here is the utterly unlikable and irritating first half that never once makes this feel like it's anything worthwhile. The interwoven family dynamic at play here with the deadbeat brother who's going nowhere in life, the idiotic sister who is too blindly in love to be tolerable, and the weakling brother who's too weak to stand up to a bully who all feels way too clichéd to be intriguing or enjoyable. Coupled with their constant sniping and bickering about being forced to spend time together or being more concerned with their social standings than anything remotely resembling a family unit, this all makes everything bland and underwhelming as a means of carrying about this supposed group of victims so it's got very little impact later on.
The other main drawback to this one is the overall lack of interest this one generates in the actual games themselves. By not dwelling on the background of what's going on and only dealing with the location where it's taking place, the games and their connection to the knife have no meaning making it again hard to care what's going on. The lack of interest that brings about is incredibly hard to overcome with the inability to understand what's going on or how it all comes together with the only real scene to do so being the discovery of the diary that seems to explain the entire thing in a rudimentary manner but feels so shortsighted it's nearly impossible to get anything useful out of the sequence. These all combine together into a series of issues that hold this one back.
Overview: **.5/5
Fun enough for what it is but still heavily problematic, there are a lot of issues here that manage to appear in this one that really impact this one overall and lower it from what it could’ve been. Those who are fans of this particular style of indie effort or are intrigued by it are the only ones who should go for this one while most others should heed extreme caution.
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