Director: Steven M. Smith
Year: 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
After inheriting the family grounds, a man tries to deal with the reports from his sisters who have come to visit that the house is haunted, and soon comes to believe they’re true when he starts diving into the terrible history of the house, forcing him to confront the deadly supernatural threat.
Review:
This was a rather strong and generally enjoyable genre effort. Among the better elements featured here come from the rather impressive sense of style and atmosphere that comes together as this one goes along. The initial gathering of the different family members at the house and immediately finding everything to be the cause of the supernatural entities that have supposedly been plaguing the family for generations, and starting on them that spurs them on to find out the reason for what’s happening, giving this a great start. We get the early family drama about them investigating the houses’ grounds while trying to reconnect with each other, and how the early hauntings occur that start freaking them out and delving into the supernatural, which feels quite natural and well-developed. The slow-burgeoning mystery about what’s going on with the potential culprits being haunted religious figures from the houses’ past coming back to torment them is quite enjoyable as a result, bringing things together quite nicely.
That’s all helped along immensely well by a series of strong and generally effective supernatural hauntings. The start of things is nicely kept low-key and restrained, revolving around visions of a white-robbed nun standing ominously but silently on the house grounds to freak them out or flash visions of the disturbed priest speaking in tongues to disorient visitors. It has some solid enough starting points to get the idea across about what’s going on. By the time it starts to move to more involved setpieces, including the revelation of the fateful encounter where the priest and nun were involved in their own adventures, to the priest materializing and targeting several of the sisters in their room, there are some generally fun times here. With the finale bringing together a nice bit of cross-cutting to show the events in the past being recreated with the characters from the present to explain what’s going on, leading into the fun finale, these all come together for a lot to like.
There are some minor issues to be had here that hold it down. The main factor to be had here is the series of encounters in the midsection, where it spends far too much time on repeating supernatural activity several times over without really breaking anything up. There are way too many scenes where it spends several beats on different ways of amping up the tension by going through these encounters without letting them breathe before it moves on to the next sequence, and it’s not always clear what everything was about. Various setpieces happening one after another make it quite chilling in the moment for sure, but there’s also the fact that it’s hard to tell what each of them was supposed to tell, similar to the actual finale, where it feels over far too quickly to make it make sense. The concept is built up nicely, but the whole thing takes place in such a rapid manner that it never comes across fully until thinking about it later, which is what keeps this one down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A generally effective and enjoyable supernatural feature, there’s a lot to like here that manages to hold it up on the chance against the few minor issues that crop up in this one. Those with an appreciation for this kind of supernatural indie effort or who don’t mind the drawbacks on display will have a lot to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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