Director: Niki Koss
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
After missing a big promotion, a group of friends decides to head out for a camping trip to reconnect and recharge for the next stage of their lives and careers, but when they mysteriously disappear, they find a masked killer has arrived, taking them out one by one.
Review:
This was a decent if problematic genre effort. The only thing that really works here is the final third of the film, where the killer starts getting involved in the weekend and starts imposing himself on what’s going on. This one puts the arrival of the killer towards the end of the film and unleashes a series of chases that take place in the woods surrounding the cabin, where he takes out several of the friends before his attention turns to the survivors. This all has some lively and energetic encounters that are handled rather well for this kind of effort. That brings on the final confrontations in the cabin where it offers up some striking revelations about what’s going on and the true purpose of the whole trip and what the purpose was about, this offers up some shocking twists as well as some rather fun if simplistic kills to keep everything in check in a short, blistering burst of a finale for its main selling point.
There are some problems to be had with this one. Among the biggest drawbacks to this one is the immensely difficult time trying to be invested in the main group of friends on their trip. Every inch the self-entitled, narcissistic worry-warts are more concerned with finding new ways to engage with followers, creating content that people want to see, and focusing on these inane activities designed to keep their phone in their hands the entire time, instead of spending time with their friends, everything they say or do is incredibly off-putting. The constant drama between everyone over these issues is nowhere near interesting enough to follow this one along, as all too often, everything here degenerates into trying to exploit this, and it never once makes for a likable or enjoyable time overall.
That carries on when the film tries to be a genuine genre effort. The influx of this kind of material in the first half means that there's far too much time spent on the group goofing off around the cabin or trying to come to terms with their social media accounts, so it barely has any time for these horror elements. These are kept to such a small part of the film that it’s somewhat possible to forget it is one without much in the way of instigating fear or tension when it’s spent more on annoyance than anything else. What makes it even worse is the seeming lack of good genre content anyway, with the revelations made here making it all the harder to sympathize with the heroine knowing what’s going on, the whole plot of the killing spree is so lame as to border on outright parody more than actual killing reason, and the lackluster effects for the simple kills make for an underwhelming time here. Overall, it’s hard to really care about much in this one.
Overview: 0.5/5
A generally underwhelming and barely worthwhile slasher effort, this one has some worthwhile moments in one section here, which are generally wiped out by the series of flaws present that take centerstage here. Those with an interest in this kind of genre fare or who are curious about it will have the most to like here, while everyone else should heed excessive caution, if not outright avoidance.
Comments
Post a Comment