Director: Crystal J. Huang
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Following her father’s death, a woman moves into his home to see what will happen to his remaining debts and turns to her friend for help in putting it together as a boarding house, but when the guests are mysteriously killed, they find everything to be a supernatural curse on the house.
Review:
Overall, this was a surprisingly enjoyable genre effort. Among the better aspects found here are the impressive setup, which manages to provide this with plenty of likeable elements. The idea of moving into a family member’s house and succumbing to an evil inside is a time-honored trope in the genre, which is handled well enough here with the inclusion of everything needing to be done so that she can pay off a massive debt that she can’t handle on her own, even with the ability to liquidate the assets left inside the house. The idea of getting her friend together and trying to use the house as a means of making money to help pay off the debt is a fun move to keep them involved in what’s going on, as well as ensuring they stay in the house due to these outside factors keeping everything in check, especially when the hauntings start occurring.
This is accomplished rather well with the whole thing coming about with the type of effective and oftentimes outright chilling supernatural hauntings that provide quite a tense atmosphere. The idea of the house being alive and toying with her as it ranges from flash vision memories of herself interacting with her father when he was still alive, objects around the house shown to be behaving unnaturally or spurting blood, or visions of demonic spirits lingering menacingly around the outskirts of the story, all offering up some rather fun moments in here. When the new guests arrive for their stay at the house, and it focuses on their encounters with a series of bizarre interactions, items changing their intention when they’re not looking, or more visions of demonic spirits apparent in the house, it all comes together with a solid enough atmosphere to give this a lot to like.
This one does have some minor drawbacks on display. The main issue within this one is the rather obvious nature of what’s going on, involving supernatural antics within the house that no one has any urgency to deal with. The flash visions and hallucinations targeting the woman who moves in start from the first instances of her believing that something is in the house with her, yet she spends more time catching up with her friend about how to make more money from setting up the house as a bed-and-breakfast. This reduces the tension drastically as the few instances of the duo experiencing the visions are then rendered non-existent when no one seems to care about it until it’s too late, especially when the film makes it to where it’s hard to figure out the purpose for the hauntings and whether it’s orchestrated by one of them or if they get possessed by what’s going on. It also results in a confused and rushed finale due to the lack of time to properly explore everything, all of which conspires to bring this down slightly.
Overview: ***.5/5
A likable if somewhat slightly flawed genre effort, there’s more than enough to like here to keep this one going against the few minor flaws featured here that bring it down. Those with an interest in this style of genre fare, who are curious about it, or who are fans of the creative crew, will have the most to like here, while most others might want to heed caution.
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