Director: Rhys Frake-Waterfield
Year: 2023
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Trying to come to terms with her past, a woman and her girlfriends rent a house in the remote countryside to help her, but when they find their trip crashed by vicious animalistic serial killers on a bloodthirsty rampage must rely on their wits and a former friend of the creatures to stop them.
Review:
This was a highly effective and enjoyable cheesy genre effort. Among the better features here is the earnestness with which the film takes the wild and silly storyline. Setup from the start to take full advantage of the popularity of the characters with the way it wraps the traditional stories into something different, the newfound direction it takes by providing the proper reasoning for their rampant bloodthirsty nature by utilizing the abandonment of their past is handled well. This has enough to bridge the past connections into being reasonable killers due to the perceived anger and betrayal that takes place here provides a lot to like as a setup.
That provides this one with the perfect opportunity to unleash some genuinely more effective scares than expected. Taking full advantage of the effectively eerie wilderness of the woods where it all takes place, the early scenes of the couple getting stalked in the hideout they used to live in or the stranded victim outside the factory where they operate out of, giving this some quite chilling scenes. A later scene of a victim in a hot tub unaware of the approaching killers who are obscured in blinking lights or the group being confronted with the aftermath of their handiwork completes this nicely enough as there are some creepy sequences at play in this one.
As well, there’s a lot of brutality at stake here once the creatures make their presence known to the girls. The overwhelming nature of their home invasion takeover brings some great scenes here chasing them around with their superior size or beating them to death using their weaponry leads perfectly into the great finale. Taking place at the creatures’ hideout where the brutality of their beatings inflicted on others they’ve captured which lets the film include plenty of high-end chases, confrontations, and a thoroughly frantic final half that’s incredibly over-the-top and graphic deaths which is all sorts of fun. Altogether, these are enough to make for a rather fun time here.
This one doesn’t have much but there are some slight issues. One of the few drawbacks present here is the viewers’ own personal preference for the treatment of the characters. Rather than do anything remotely familiar with the usual treatment of the characters, this one features them as vicious, brutal serial killers out to decimate anyone and everyone they come across which can be outright insulting depending on your individual attachment to the characters. If that’s not a factor, the cheap nature of what’s happening and the intensely shaking camera on display when we see the creatures moving after others that’s difficult to make out are the main issues to bring it down.
Overview: ****.5/5
A highly enjoyable effort in the right mindset, the majority of your individual reaction to this one will likely rest on your attachment to the characters as a whole. Those who can put that content aside and appreciate this type of indie affair or are fans of the creative crew will have the most to like here while anyone who isn’t into these factors due to their preference to the original source material should outright avoid it.
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