Director: Zach Cregger
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Witchcraft
Plot:
After a bizarre mystery, a small-town community looks into what happened when a class of students mysteriously disappeared without a trace, which forces a teacher to begin investigating what happened to the kids, eventually putting her in the crosshairs of a vengeful supernatural being.
Review:
Overall, this was an intriguing if problematic genre entry. Among the better elements present here come from the strong central setup, which manages to provide this with an immensely intriguing and chilling starting point. The first half here involves the mysterious disappearance of the kids, which sparks a huge concern from the parents over the assistant who was left behind, which starts this off with a crazed mystery and not much in the way of clues to figure out what happened. The ensuing panic and chaos in the town trying to paint her as the culprit when no one else knows what’s going on, why it happened, or how no one knew it would happen sets off a realistic sense of paranoia and burgeoning hysteria that takes place as everyone tries to make sense of the situation due to the episodic, non-linear approach to the main storyline. This all comes back around in a fun way towards the end when the full context of everything is revealed, leading to a series of wild and over-the-top chases throughout the community, resulting in a fantastic gore gag at the end.
Beyond this, though, the film is pretty disjointed and problematic. A lot of this is due to the mystery angle that wears out its intrigue long before it starts pulling reveals, as the jumbled, scattered approach caused by the nonlinear structure zaps the momentum before anything happens. Far too often, a character reaches a point in their story where something is about to happen only to have the film halt the breaks on it to turn around and focus on someone else who’s off doing their own thing that eventually comes together two or three segments later that gives the scene its meaning long after the time has come to make something of what originally happened. That structure leaves large gaps in the film’s immensely long running time, without much of anything happening, as it takes forever for any of the clues to come together or mean anything.
The other big drawback with this one is the bizarre series of revelations that come about when it finally comes together at the wrong point in the running order. The whole reveal comes off in the film from a random character that has little purpose being there and has little connection to what the actual plot or rampage is all about, so the whole thing comes about from a problematic viewpoint since it’s at the wrong point in the film from the wrong character. By lessening the tension and playing around with the type of setup it has for the villain’s main plan, this is entirely underwhelming with the type of action that comes about after the early starting point, which never feels entirely plausible in how it’s built. Those early scenes point to a great mystery that’s played off the wrong way, and everything that emerges from the investigation of the mystery never comes close to the type of outcome we get when it’s all revealed, which all makes for a disappointing effort.
Overview: ***/5
An overall intriguing if problematic genre effort, there’s enough to like with this one that manages to be likeable enough even though the overwhelming amount of flaws here do keep this back in the end. Those with an interest in this style of mainstream genre fare, who are curious about it, or who are fans of the creative crew, will have the most to like, while most others out there should heed caution.
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