Director: Gabriel Bienczycki, Richard Karpala
Year: 2024
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Knowing it’s nearly that special time of year, brothers set out on a journey to watch over the grave of a woman suspected to be a local witch, but after disrupting the grave and setting the witch free are forced into dealing with the witch and her deadly plans for the community.
Review:
This was a really decent genre effort that gets let down slightly. Among the better features here is the immensely strong and effective visual atmosphere created here which makes the film immensely chilling. With the eerie locations and overall tone of the rural setting give everything a fantastic setup that goes well alongside the connections with the folklore established within this universe involving how the witches operate, this creates a highly effective folk-horror grounding that gets quite involved. Detailing how the harvest works, how it all started, and the implications for humanity in a world where they have to offer themselves up to witches to avoid a worldwide apocalypse lets this one come together quite nicely as it leads to the fun finale battling the creature.
There are some slight issues that hold this one down. One of the main factors against this one comes from the unnecessary deviations in the story to the couple at the radio station who are perfect at expanding the lore of the universe with the wrenches but also does this at the expense of the tempo. This is already a slow enough genre effort where very little happens but to then interrupt everything for this kind of useless world-building makes the film feel far less intense than it should. It all makes for an occasion where this one really should’ve been expanded with the world being far too intriguing to leave everything as limp as it does here which is somewhat disappointing and brings this one down enough to the point where it’s serviceable enough but still underwhelming.
Overview: **/5
A solid if somewhat problematic genre effort, there’s a lot to like here if you’re a fan of the approach which is also a potential stumbling block to get into this one. Those who are fine with the issues present, enjoy this kind of genre effort, or are curious about it will want to give it a shot while most others might want to heed caution here.
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