Director: Becca Hirani (as Rebecca J. Matthews)
Year: 2018
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Struggling with her life, a burnt-out nursing student decides to join a group of friends performing a special ritual to kill themselves and then come back to life to observe what happens after death, but when they realize they’ve brought a malignant figure after them have to stop it.
Review:
This was an enjoyable enough if overall problematic genre effort. Among the better qualities here are the measures included that provide for a rather fun way of mixing together several different scenarios. The original idea of the ritual that must be performed including special rituals, preparations, and safety measures that will then allow them to be able to contact their specific deceased relative, making for a fun time here to understand their motivations and reasoning to undergo everything, including the whole concept of killing themselves. That this triggers a literal personification of the Grim Reaper to chase after them for breaking the rules of entering it’s domain makes sense with the second half making use of the series of encounters present to discover they’ve been attacked by these supernatural forces including the demonic cat setting up encounters involving their deaths being made to look like suicides. These manage to provide some likable factors here.
There are a lot of issues holding it down. The biggest drawback to this one is the immensely sluggish pace that never once leaves this one with an uninspired and plodding setup. The central idea of everything starts off well enough to get her to the group looking for a nurse to help them complete everything, but going about it while making the first half feature nothing of interest until after the fifty-minute mark, while they get everything in order, is just painfully, abysmally dull and pointless. That leaves this to rush through the final half, stalking and killing them in some rapid encounters to make up for how the first half lays everything out. That everyone who performs this is so monumentally stupid and ignorant of what they’re actually doing is another big issue as their inability to see what’s plainly going on around them yet continuing to trust everything makes it feel very stupid and uninteresting, and with the film’s equally obvious budgetary limitations in play, are what manage to bring it down.
Overview: *.5/5
An intriguing if ultimately misguided genre effort, there’s enough going on here to be somewhat watchable, yet it manages to have too many flaws present to be anything more than that at best. Those with an interest in the subject matter or who are curious about it will be the main driving factor here, while most others out there should heed caution.
Comments
Post a Comment