Director: Stephen Cognetti
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Following their mother’s accident, a family decides to move to a new house in a small town to help get over the incident which soon begins a series of supernatural hauntings that point them in the direction of a local curse said to grip the town in a terrifying state and must uncover it’s deadly secret.
Review:
Overall, this was a fun haunted house effort. One of the better features of this one is the general setup that provides the kind of impressive starting point that keeps the film straightforward and simplistic. The main idea about the whole town itself being cursed by the spirit of the woman who was bullied and tormented by the locals before finally setting out into unleashing a curse on them for not doing much about it all makes a solid if somewhat formulaic setup that at least serves to generate a reasoning behind the hauntings. With the subsequent storylines about the town being under a series of strange suicides and the belief that finding and destroying the culprit’s house will end everything, they are unable to give this a great touch to build off of that idea into a far more impactful storyline.
This is all enhanced quite well with the film’s focus on grief and trauma that the being can exploit. With the family offering up a variation on the as-per-usual family grief storyline with the mother dying shortly before the story and going to live with her sister and husband in the town, the wife trying to get her career started to the point of going against her sisters’ wishes, and the husband looking to get settled in for a local teaching job, things get settled out in quick order about detailing a generally solid starting point for the hauntings to come. It mixes together enough expected bits and some newfound storyline points to work rather nicely with the traumatic past associated with the ghostly haunting and tie everything together into a fine whole.
That all means the hauntings are handled well enough and are almost outright chilling at points. The initial series of scenes featuring the family trying to make sense of the house and coming under each others’ suspicions due to the disappearing and reappearing mannequin in different places of the house, giving this one a solid touch. The infusion of several scenes involving eerie whispers and voices talking to others is a fun way to continue this, while the second half goes for a series of intriguing interactions involving the creature coming to make sure the curse continues. As there’s a strong setup from the first half explaining everything, the scenes involving the spirit coming to protect its secret offer up the kind of intriguing and chilling elements that provide this with some great parts.
There are some issues here that do hold it back. As expected, a lot of the supernatural haunting background work is pretty generic and expected, focusing on yet another vengeful spirit haunting a town for an indiscretion in the past and holding a grudge into the modern day. This comes off rather awkwardly and familiar with dozens of other similar fare, and is only enhanced by the series of uninteresting and generally bland family trauma dynamics that are utilized throughout the first half. This one has quite little to be recommended about it due to the lifeless tone and formulaic approach taken here that manages to hit everything expected when going through the motions of a family getting over a traumatic incident that doesn’t make it anyone that likable, bringing the film down overall.
Overview: ****/5
An immensely intriguing and oftentimes chilling haunting film, there’s quite a lot to like here which keeps everything quite fun even if there are some drawbacks that keep it down. Those who are intrigued by this particular style or are fans of the creative crew will have a lot to like here while most others out there might want to heed caution.
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