Director: Martin Florio
Year: 2026
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Struggling with her latest book, an author returns to her family home in Uruguay to reunite with her sister and look after their ailing father before his upcoming death, but as she stays there, she finds the monstrous insect she used to imagine as a kid has returned and starts affecting her family.
Review:
This was an incredibly likable and highly enjoyable genre effort. One of the better features within this one is the incredibly effective and twisting storyline that provides this with far more depth than expected in what’s supposedly a simple enough story. The whole setup of the woman and her traumatic past turning that into a successful career as an author and being called back to her family home to tend to her dying father and meet up with the stepsister she never knew she had is a fine enough reason to get this going. It’s a formulaic enough setup that allows this to bring back all sorts of tensions and false promises about how her troubled life led to where she is now, make amends with her father, and start a strange relationship with her stepsister that stirs up more memories than it should, playing up some competent drama in the first half as she settles into trying to fix everything that happened to her.
That means that when this starts to dive into the more overt genre scares and concepts, there’s plenty to like here. Since we’re given a few glimpses of what happened to both her and her family in the past by looking into the incident with the strange insect-like creature that attacked and mutilated her brother when they were children, that turns the few dreams and visions she has while staying there about it into something that functions well enough to bring about some creepy enough moments at the right moment. The other glimpses here about what was going on at the house before she arrived, with the stepsister being immensely offputting with her mannerisms and intentions, while the later scenes revealing that the father might be afflicted by the same thing as her late brother, add more than enough intrigue to be quite fun overall.
It all comes to a head in the finale, where the multiple storylines come together rather nicely. Realizing the truth about what’s going on with her stepsister and her connection with what happened to her father, this becomes a fun race to get everything resolved and figured out before it’s too late. With not just the need to rescue her father from his predicament and get the fateful plans for the stepsister stopped, the truth about the killer insect and what it’s meant to be serves to add a nice touch overall here, especially with the experience tying into what little we’ve been told about it until this point, since it’s just been stuck in the shadows the entire time. Due to the creepy Gothic atmosphere and strong effects during this time, there’s a lot of fun to be had that holds it up quite nicely.
There isn’t much to dislike here, but it does have some slight issues. One of the few issues here is the fact that there’s quite a long build-up to something happening here, with far more of a drama touch to the first hour that doesn’t have much in the way of genre fare happening around it. With so much of this stuff revolving around the attempt to reconnect with her father and her stepmother that she never knew she had, this takes on a slow-going tempo that doesn’t feature much in the way of genuine genre happenings during this period. As well, there’s also the series of generally ineffective CGI used for the killer insect that might be necessary due to the unnatural design it sports, but it stands out quite a bit due to the tone it presents compared to the more grounded style the rest of the film employs. It’s not detrimental but does stand out to lower this one.
Overview: ****/5
A really strong and generally effective genre effort, this one has more than enough to like that it stands up quite heavily against the few minor drawbacks present that keep it down. Those with an appreciation for this kind of genre fare, who are curious about it, or who aren't concerned about its issues will have a lot to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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