Director: Eddie Lengyel
Year: 2024
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Years after his wife's death, a distraught man heads off into the woods to search for the legendary beast that killed her, and when he comes into contact with a group of friends he tries to save them from the vicious creature and its minions when h e discovers the deadly intent behind its appearance.
Review:
This was a fairly solid and enjoyable genre effort. One of the finer aspects of this one is the rather strong use of local folklore and customs that offers up a wholly unique spin for the holiday. With the use of the specific holiday itself is the first sign that something unique is about to happen due to the infrequent use, that it goes on from there with the local folklore being featured here involving the different customs and beliefs about the creature and how it connects to the specific location. This ties together incredibly well with the concurrent backstory involving the man's quest for answers about what happened to him and his wife years ago as they manage to set up the idea of the creature being real and hunting the community. This works to bring him into the story as well as the main group of friends out celebrating the holiday for a rather fun main storyline in this type of feature.
That allows the film to become quite fun once the creature and its minions arrive to start doling out a series of cheesy confrontations. The initial setup with the couple getting attacked at the beginning is a fine way to get this going as the darkness and confusion make for a solid beginning which has a lot to do with the emotional and mental trauma of the situation going forward. The later encounters that take place here with the group stranded at the remote house in the woods where the creatures appear and attack is incredibly fun, with the majority of the scenes involving the zombie-like minions appearing to carry out a slew of vicious ambush-style confrontations and some decent attempts at a defense that doesn’t always work well. It all comes to a head at the creatures’ ceremonial ritual where the true purpose for their arrival and abduction of the group results in some great battles back-and-forth between the survivors on the rescue mission trying to save their friend and the encounters that result here which has some fun moments, a lot of action and some great gore thrown in to give the film a lot to like.
The film does have a few minor drawbacks. The biggest issue is a slightly overlong running time that has a bit more than necessary going on here. With a lot of the first half here revolving around the group going through the countryside meeting the locals and getting to meet the main group that we're supposed to be following, it does so at the expense of getting the creatures involved in anything else here so it spends a lot of time going from the opening attack to the later sequences at the house when they arrive there so it takes quite a long time before anything remotely genre-related starts to occur. Moreover, that also highlights a secondary issue where the film has spent so much time on the group coming together and getting a hand on the cast that it hasn't spent enough time on the purpose of the creature being there. Instead of what should be a chilling reaction to its mission, that almost feels like an afterthought based on the reaction the creatures have been performing beforehand based on this lack of build-up to what it's trying to do. It's not a huge issue but it does come about to lower this one somewhat alongside the usual indie efforts like its obvious low-budget and flimsy CGI work.
Overview: ***.5/5
A highly effective indie effort without much to hold it back, this one has a lot to really like that holds it up over those few minor factors to bring it down just slightly. Those who are fans of this kind of indie effort or are curious about it will have a lot to like here while those who are turned off by the style or approach should heed caution.
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