Director: Michael Merino
Year: 2026
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Cult
Plot:
Arriving at a small town, a struggling writer looking to recharge her creative outlet for her new work is continuously tormented by those around her, which soon sets her up to believe that she’s been targeted by a deadly cult as a sacrificial offering to its elder God and must try to get away.
Review:
Overall, this was a fairly decent genre effort. One of the better elements with this one is the intriguing enough central premise that manages to bring about the kind of workable enough type of story that comes about here. The central premise involving the writer returning to her small-town home and trying to get some work for her career done in the place where she grew up only to be continually inundated with a slew of distractions and interactions from the locals that hint at something unnatural and not normal from how she left that slowly becomes more obvious as a front to something happening works well enough to keep this moving along nicely. Despite not being all that original, the way it starts to slowly start introducing enough elements that they’re planning something nefarious towards her, from the various cutaways to conversations they have about her to the different visits to her house under flimsy pretexts, all set about hinting that something ominous is occurring.
That pays off incredibly well in the second half when it starts moving from the meaningful, if context-free, conversations and harmless visits to something far more visceral. The inclusion of demonic visions and hallucinations involving cloaked and robed figures watching her from the shadows or the nightmares of the spirit coming to visit her gives everything the kind of dark setup that’s quite fun, detailing the kind of build-up that gives this some decent chills, leading into the grand reveal in the finale when everything comes together. The purpose of everything, from the dinner date she has, which gets her drugged and able to experience the real purpose of the visits from the locals, as they’re plans to sacrifice her for a special occult ceremony, is a fun touch with the dark reveals coming about through seeing a doppelganger version of herself engaging in their activities that all lead to the ceremonial ritual at the heart of this one which is incredibly fun and offers some solid enough ideas throughout here, all making for some likable factors within here.
There are some issues here that bring this one down. One of the main drawbacks with this one is the immensely confusing and scattershot plot that doesn’t seem to offer up much in the way of a coherent storyline throughout here. The whole thing goes back and forth between the whole thing actually happening in real life, when everyone keeps commenting on her disheveled state, or if the actions of everyone around her are being played out in her book, with the way she jots down the activities and interactions as inspiration for her novel. As this keeps going into this bizarre universe where she keeps meeting the owner of the property in multiple scenarios, it never makes it clear what’s going on as nothing here hints at the possible meaning behind everything until it gets to the finale where the only action indicating this as a potential genre effort is so far removed from the style of genre fare that it’s immensely difficult to get a handle on what’s going on overall. Combined with the obvious low-budget limitations present here, these all hold this one down overall.
Overview: ***/5
A watchable if overall problematic genre effort, there’s plenty of likable elements within here, but just as many problematic and detrimental ones that hold it down overall. Those with an appreciation or interest in this one, or who are fans of the creative crew, will have the most to like here, while most others out there might want to heed caution.
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