Director: Bret McCormick (as Max Raven)
Year: 2022
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Cult
Plot:
Desperate to fulfill a sacred prophecy, a deadly cult looking to remove interest in a special high school said to hold mystical powers for their group concocts a plan to remove everyone from the area through a cursed craft fair celebration, forcing a group of locals to band together to fight back.
Review:
This was a wholly underwhelming and barely watchable genre effort. Most of the issues here are down to the presentation of what’s going on here, from the nonsensical story that’s being told here, where it’s nearly impossible to figure out what the endgame of everything is supposed to be. The first half makes it so confusing as to what we’re watching, who’s doing what, or why, as the series of different forces at play here means this is so haphazard in its presentation of everyone that it’s difficult to figure the group out. Taking on the cult leader principal trying to secure the land for the coven, the local mystic who can read tarot and tries to help stop them, her craftsman friend trying to make a living selling his wares, an Indian shaman hoping to protect his ancestral land from falling into the wrong hands, the mall owner wanting to get the property for himself, and the cult’s devious henchman enforcer who takes glee in killing others as sacrifices for the cult is already quite heavy on the amount of characters to keep track of, but to then keep up with the various locals or high school students from the town center itself is even more going on that makes it even harder to look into.
On top of that, this one is so inherently cheap and cheesy that most goodwill about trying to make do with its limited resources is stretched thin when the film has little going on to make it immersive. The whole first half here is so concerned with getting its plot spelled out that nothing much happens until the film is half-over, with the first stops around town leaving the severed presents falling in around the forty-minute mark. Spending all of this time on figuring out these different characters and their purpose means that nothing ever happens due to the preponderance of scenes involving people speaking over their phones trying to engage in extended conversations about what’s happening. These just drain the life of the film before it even has a chance to get going, keeping any kind of action off-camera until the finale that takes place at the titular craft fair, which happens to include some decent enough ideas and a solid enough means of defeating everyone that plays into the storyline nicely with its cheesy action. However, it’s also mostly undone by the sense of cheapness that occurs throughout here, from the chintzy body parts for the gore, the general lack of spectacle in anything that happens, and almost as much stock footage as genuine footage, keeping this one down overall.
Overview: */5
A disappointing, underwhelming, and barely worthwhile genre effort, there’s so little to this one that works here that it manages to be a practically worthless genre effort overall due to how little here is worthwhile. Those with an affinity for this type of genre fare will be the main audience for this one, while most others out there should heed extreme caution if not outright avoid it.
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