Director: Brittany Greer
Year: 2026
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Returning to her hometown, a teen tries to get on with her life following a traumatic encounter with a classmate as the rest of the town prepares for a special Halloween celebration, unaware that a killer is stalking the team of friends and forces her to stop the madman.
Review:
Overall, this was a fairly solid teen-themed genre slasher. Among the brighter factors within this one comes from the worthwhile central setup that allows this to play within the kind of formulaic setups that the genre is quite well-adapted for. The central starting point of the teen returning to her old hometown and finding the wounds of the past coming back to haunt her, when the initial incident that spurred her to leave involved a prank gone wrong that left a friend responsible for the death of a classmate, sets everything up rather nicely. Trying to get back into the graces of her old friends by getting involved in their project to prepare the school for the upcoming Halloween party they're throwing makes for a nice addition to this as it allows for the assortment of solid atmospheric decorations to take place, but the usual assortment of teen drama cliches come about to help set the characters in motion for what's to come.
As well, with this helping to give the appropriate small-town Halloween atmosphere, there's plenty to like when it comes to the stalking and slashing. When it becomes apparent that her lying has made it impossible to come to terms with their previous fate in the race to get the group away from the now escaped killer, this serves to bring about the interactions later on, where everything is designed to introduce the killer going around taking out the class for what happened. The fact that it’s centered on abduction sequences and taking them back to a secret lair where they’re strapped and killed off in front of a neon-drenched backdrop as the killer goes to work removing body parts. Using these in the messages to taunt the girl into realizing what the rampage is about and how this leads to the final confrontation in his house leads to a lot of fun throughout here, surrounding the decorative mutilations of her friends, giving this some likable factors.
There are some issues here that hold this one down. The main problematic factor here is that this one manages to highlight the teen drama and splintered relationships over the stalking for the first hour, so it’s a bit of a struggle to stay invested in what’s going on. There’s a lot of fun work to be had with the revelations surrounding what happened the year prior, how the friend group is being brought back together, and how the killer’s strikes start to bring old wounds back to the surface. However, those are at the expense of straightforward slasher features, which are kept to brief bits of the victim getting abducted and then dismembered in the lair, offering a disconnect in the pacing where it takes a while to start up. The other issue here is the overall familiarity with the appearance and tone of the film, where it’s so openly aping the style and presentation of the genre that might not be appreciative for all out there who aren’t interested in that part of the genre’s history, leaving this with a style that might put some off for its very inclusion. Otherwise, these are the few drawbacks on display.
Overview: ***/5
A really solid if slightly problematic teen slasher, this has a lot going for it, which makes far more of an impact for fans of the style presented there, which might not always be the case for most out there. Those who are appreciative of the style attempted here, who don’t mind the issues on display, or who are big slasher fans in general, will have the most to like, while most others might want to heed caution here.
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