Director: Erik Bloomquist
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Cult
Plot:
Eager to connect with her mother, a college student decides to go with her mother to a bizarre healers’ retreat on a remote lake that promises to help others connect with their true selves, but the longer they stay, the more she realizes the sinister motive hiding behind everything.
Review:
This was a pretty solid if somewhat flawed genre effort. What works best with this one is the multifaceted, genre-merging setup at play here, with the film merging several different genres together into a fantastic setup. The initial setup offering the twisting family drama into the mix of a seeming cult drama where the different dynamics at play between the mother and daughter over their opinions and trying to find a way to rebuild their relationship while their mother takes a trip to her commune leader boyfriends’ retreat serves as a fantastic starting point for what’s going to happen. As they try to go through the different rehabilitation tactics to get closer to each other and the burgeoning idea of what’s actually happening at the commune, this serves rather well to instigate the rest of the story.
Once it moves beyond the family drama storyline, the sense of dread and unease that develops from being around the convent and what slowly begins to look suspiciously like a cult has formed around her mother’s boyfriend. Seeing the type of interactions he has with others at the location while she’s visiting, the obedience and strict adherence to his teachings that starts getting increasingly more unhinged over time, where it soon develops into physical mutilation than anything else, as the most gruesome sequence involving the one member comfortable enough to gouge their eyes out under his suggestion. That final confrontation, from the encounter in the cabin to the full extent of everything being revealed and coming together in fine form, provides this with an energetic and brutal conclusion, which has quite a lot to like about it.
There are some drawbacks to this one that hold it back. The main issue with this one is the slack and misguided pacing that manages to drain the energy out of this one before it even starts. Since the beginning stages are more concerned with the dysfunctional family drama and the daughter attempting to reconnect with the mother, who’s still in the clutches of her boyfriend’s self-help society, there’s more of a focus on the behavioral issues and past trauma that keep the action and cult shenanigans at bay as these factors are involved. As well, other scenes at the retreat, getting a clue about the true intent of the cult, very little overtly obvious genre fare occurs, as it’s all about the ominous nature of everything, so everything tends to be far more laid-back than expected, so those expecting a frenetic pace will be disappointed. Those will be what hold this one back the most.
Overview: ***.5/5
A solid and likable if somewhat flawed genre effort, this one does have some likable factors to it while still being just slightly let down by the few drawbacks on display here. Those who appreciate this approach or who are fans of the creative crew will have a lot to enjoy with this one, while most others out there should heed caution.
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