Director: James Coleman, Vincent Coleman
Year: 2024
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
After the death of his wife, a grieving man trying to pick up the pieces of the situation moves in with his sister in a small town in the woods to get over it, but when they run afoul of a demonic cult looking to make them a sacrifice to a dark entity they have to band together to save each other.
Review:
This was an impressive genre outing. One of the finer aspects of this one is the solid storyline that, while employing some overly familiar tropes and topics, feels intriguing enough as a proper slow-burn genre feature. The early setup here, mainly revolving around the setup of the accident that sends him into his depression and the need to get away into the remote community with his friends to try to heal only to suddenly find himself face to face with the cult and their operations in the area, this comes about rather nicely. The idea of his grief clouding his judgment about how they operate and target their victims as there’s just enough about how they go about selecting their next victims with their spiritual signs and system telling them who’s going to be involved provides the kind of solid setup here with them operating in the background of everything and given just enough to know what they’re about and capable of without revealing too much about their history.
By the time this slowly starts to make the cult more of a factor and influence over what’s going on, there’s enough of an eerie atmosphere involving them that their presence starts to impact the film quite nicely. The initial setup of their involvement in the community and trying to carry out their rituals while others are turning a blind eye to everything goes alongside the other fine scenes where the ethereal voices or visions tormenting him and his sister carry out quite well as it leads into the thrilling second half. After showing how vicious and ruthless they are overtaking the house and abducting them after the ceremony is witnessed. Featuring enough gruesome action not just for what their rituals entail but also the series of revenge-based confrontations with the cult at the end which is incredibly brutal and graphic involving the practical effects for the series of encounters employed. These here are what give this one quite a lot to like.
There are some issues here to bring this one down. The main drawback here is a rather slow-burn pace in the first half which tends to bring about a stuttering tempo during this section. As this focuses on the build-up of his grieving state and the inability of those around him to pull him out of this situation, there’s a decided low-key energy here as we’re dealing yet again with a cliched grief-centered storyline that comes off as yet another in this line of storyline but also tends to deal without the antics of the cult who are completely unknown and mysterious in a way that makes their purpose a total blank since we don’t get the chance to be around them. Although they’re involved in the periphery of everything, we don’t even get so much as a name or idea of what they worship so it’s a bit of a blank as for what’s going on. This carries over into the bizarre finale where it’s somewhat hard to tell what’s going on as the lack of context or explanations means it spends a lot of these scenes relying on interpreting what’s happening without much else going on to explain it. These features here are what brings this one down overall.
Overview: ****/5
A fantastic supernatural-tinged genre effort, there’s quite a lot to like here which manages to make this one quite enjoyable as it overcomes a few flaws that hold it down. Those who are fans of this particular genre or are intrigued by it will have the most to like here while most others out there that are turned off by the approach here should heed caution.
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