Director: Damien Paris, Domonic Paris
Year: 2026
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Arriving at a remote farm, a family tries to make their way on the property as it proves increasingly difficult to work the land to any capacity, which slowly becomes the home to a series of disastrous outbreaks involving those around them, and they must try to navigate away from the area.
Review:
This was a fairly solid and generally likable genre effort. One of the better factors here is the rather strong setup that provides this with a fantastic central storyline to play out in the kind of fashion this does. This main starting point, involving the family arriving on the property that’s been established in the cold open to be somewhat tainted and cursed, and coming across the effects of this spoiled land themselves when they try to do up the property waiting for his wife to give birth, sets up the kind of solid enough main point here to with the ability to get darker as this goes along. Since the arrival at the house and the early stages of them working to fix it up mean they’re able to work out enough character points alongside the slowly-burgeoning idea about the contaminated parts of the field to be explored together, these central starting points give this a solid enough opening.
As well, there’s also a lot to like with the ecology-based horror scenarios at play, with the ground around them being the thing trying to kill them. With the cold open showing the proof about its cursed origins with the dead body left behind, the next owners eating food from the cursed ground and being subjected to a series of grotesque body deformities and mutations as a result, there’s a growing sense of dread established by the multitude of scenes here focused on the family cultivating the land, trying to replenish the soil, and growing new crops to harvest for themselves. That carries over into the fantastic finale, where the degenerate mutations featured here bring about a frantic race to deal with the infected members who are turning into deformed beings after ingesting part of the soiled goods from the land that ends up giving this some solid action and plenty of solid gore. These all provide a lot to like.
There are some issues that hold it back. The main drawback with this one is the seemingly cliched and overdone part of the story that requires people to be outright stupid about ignoring warning signs to let the infection storyline carry through. It’s quite obvious, from the degenerating facial features, constant stream of unnatural behavioral outbursts, and the deteriorating manner of grotesqueness that comes about from these people getting gradually overwhelmed by the effects of the environment, yet everything is done with a sense of stupidity to carry it forth by dismissing every single warning sign and warning others to drop the issue when it’s brought up. This really helps to lower the sympathy of the characters during the second half, when it matters the most, lessening the tension at the wrong point. As well as some low-budget limitations that show up quite heavily, these all come together to hold this one down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A really enjoyable and effective genre effort, there are a lot of likable factors here holding this one up, as this does have some minor factors keeping it down from what it could’ve been. Those with an appreciation for this style or approach, or who aren’t bothered by the flaws on display, will have a lot to like here, while most others out there might want to heed caution.
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