Director: Benjamin Barfoot
Year: 2024
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Following his father’s death, a kid and his stepmom try to deal with the situation and the strained relationship they share, but as they try to move on together they are continually inundated with signs that someone might be following them and sets out to keep him out of its grasp.
Review:
Overall, this was a rather striking and likable enough feature. Among the more likable factors here is the engaging setup that provides a strong backbone for the kind of material at play. With the main starting point offering a heartbreaking situation where the mother’s already died and then the father passes away at the very start leaving him with a strained relationship with the stepmom now forced to care for him while trying to keep her life in check and come to terms with everything going on in her life brings along quite nicely. As well, this starts off their relationship to the point where its expected reconciliation throughout what’s happening to them with the incidents around the house trying to attack them that forces them to have to rely on each other to overcome what’s going on as they’re both going through the same thing manages to provide a strong grounding for the film going forward.
That allows for a strong series of setpieces here establishing the mental anguish of the two manifesting as a potential creature haunting them. It’s fairly obvious the idea of the creature being a manifestation of their repressed and unprocessed grief forces them to believe things aren’t what they seem and their affected nature causes everything to be misinterpreted so scenes like an animal appearing in the house unexpectedly before getting chase off, a potential sighting of something lurking in the trees outside the house, or the discovery of a particular hideout in the area. It soon grows in confidence and daring to make regular visits to the house in an attempt to bring the son into its world while she tries valiantly to save him, again featuring some genuinely creepy visuals and strong elements at play regarding how it all rebuilds their fractured relationship along the way with some decent enough kills and bloody aftermath, all making for a decent enough time.
There are some issues with this one holding it back. The main issue here is the overall lack of urgency that arises from the first half spending far too much time once again in a series of grief-porn storylines trying to portray how their life has gone. This is to be expected given the setup at play with how the stepmom is grieving for her husband after the car accident that left him literally on death’s door when we start things off, but it’s such an overused trope for the type of relationship this establishes to have the cold and distant stepson trying to deal with it on his own at the expense of everyone else trying to do it for him that makes it all the more sluggish to get going since their naturally lethargic energy with not a lot o faction makes for a hard time getting started. That’s in addition to the already overdone use of grief and trauma established here to try to make the story work which is tired and overdone, making for some pretty sizable obstacles to overcome.
Overview: ****/5
A generally enjoyable if somewhat problematic take on a familiar formula, there’s quite a lot to like here which manages to hold it up over the few drawbacks that are present. Give it a shot if you’re interested in the subject matter, don’t mind the approach, or are just general fans of this particular genre while most others out there should heed caution with it.
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