Reviews

This movie is uninspired on every level - uninspired acting, uninspired cinematography, uninspired script. The actors do the best with what they can, but it's clear that the little they have to work with is not enough. The director relies on a painfully few number of camera angles, and for some reason is obsessed with showing shots of the exterior of a house - presumably the house that the characters are in, but maybe just his own house? Because it doesn't seem to match up. My current theory is that it's there to pad out the run time, because it serves no other purpose.

How bad is this movie? I've never seen a movie that literally sums up all the plot points in the film in a flashback RIGHT AFTER you see them happen. Like, you could sleep through the movie, wake up for the last 10 minutes and not miss out on any of the plot because it replays it all for you, and honestly, the flashback makes you think the director expected people to do just that.

The worst part is, it's impossible to not watch this movie without thinking of the far better ones it cribs its plot points from - Misery, Besetment, heck, even the movie poster cribs from Sinister. Do yourself a favor and just rewatch them instead of this one.

What this movie does right: If you're going to make a movie with a bunch of demonic slasher demons, give us blood and lots of it. When the kills are happening, it's got a great low-budget, low-class '80s throwback vibe. And I kind of love the cheesiness of the costumes. Yeah, demons, let's throw down.

What this movie does wrong: Every moment when the slashers aren't on screen. It's not that the actors aren't trying, it's just that as you watch the umpteenth scene of characters not listening to the main character, you are painfully aware that you could watching five slasher demons killing people instead. It's what we're here for, so give us more of it. The dialogue is laughably bad, while the demons just pantomime, which is another point in their favor.

Next time, just let the police raid the killer, take the book, read it out loud at the station, and let the demons slash their way through cops and criminals alike while the heroine tries to figure out how to stop it. It would have been a much better plot. Then again, this movie didn't have the budget for police uniforms, so...

This movie gets an extra star, however, for the audacious ambition of creating a cinematic universe with other extremely low budget, quickly made throwaway horror movies like The Curse of Humpty Dumpty. I see you, movie, and I appreciate you for it just a little bit more.

[Yes, the name is clearly a rip of Five Nights at Freddy's, but eh, who cares, I got more blood in this one than in the official one. And ripping off movie names has been a time-honored low-budget tradition for decades now, anyway.]

Who it's for: Fans of horror movies like the cheesy, often lumbering Lovecraft adaptations from the 90s - if you can watch them in all their uneven glory, you'll probably have a lot of fun watching this movie. I recommend watching it with friends who enjoy yelling advice at the screen and view watching horror movies as a social activity.

Who it's not for: Gorehounds who want lots of blood, people who hate "evil cult" movies, people who can't find any joy watching low-budget indie flicks made by people who dream a bit higher than they can reach, people who only like deeply intellectual movies.

What it's got going for it: A) A decent plot. B) Some fun classic horror actors that it's always good to see on screen. C) A sense of humor. D) A clear love for the genre. E) A good climax. F) Actors who obviously care about their role and aren't just zombie-ing their way through the lines like you get in flicks from The Asylum; when they look and sound amateurish in the beginning, it's intentional. G) A monster that looks way better than Rawhead Rex (again, a low bar, but hey).

What this move needed: A) An editor. The dialogue would be a lot funnier with better pacing, and the action would have as well. B) A bigger budget, especially for special effects. For the amount of people killed in this movie, the deaths are ridiculously bloodless. C) Less restraint. This movie deserved to run wild and go to 11. I don't care if you're using sausages and ketchup like the first NotLD movie, put that axe into someone's stomach and let the gory good times fly. That's what the core audience of a movie like this is going to be there for. D) More on-screen time for the horror greats. I don't know if it was a budget or availability issue, but I for one would have LOVED to see Tony Todd or Adrienne Barbeau as the sheriff, for example. Let the folks with the horror chops lift the movie up. E) A little more awareness. It's 2022, we're past the point of only having one black character who sacrifices himself to save the main white cast with no motivation. See D - Tony Todd as the lead would have been banging.

All that said, I finished this movie with a certain fondness for it. It's low-budget, but it knows what its job was. It's decently directed and shot, and decently acted. It just needed *more*.

The best parts of this film are the ones where they explore the mystery - the interviews with various townsfolk. It works the most as an earnest horror movie about ghost hunters that aren't charlatans. I'd give these segments 7 stars on their own.

The worst parts of this film are the denouement - the tension felt forced, the urgency felt artificial, and the acting really took a turn for the rushed and unbelievable. The main characters, who have been more than acceptable up to now, somehow lose the ability to act.

The film seems to forget about all of the other people besides the original inhabitants that were somehow lured there. There's no explanation for them, and no resolution, either. The movie would have been better off excluding them from the mystery altogether.

Moreover, the death of post-death dialogue of one of the main characters is so incredibly anticlimactic and off-screen that the movie would have been better off leaving it out, or letting the guy survive - it would have been better to see him fight off the guy, die to the smoke inhalation and then get CPRed back into existence.

We were promised a terrifying ultimate evil and it did not deliver. The filmmakers would have been better off recognizing the limitations of their budget and talent and revising the ending to do what they can do well, rather than doing what they can't do terribly.

This movie shines in moments. It's plot, with the girls intentionally planning to hunt down a serial killer, is actually pretty inspired. And there are a lot of funny moments that take the piss out the sexist tropes from the 80s. This had the potential to be a great horror-comedy, and the shower scene was inspired.

But whenever this movie makes jokes about feminism or masculinity, it becomes leaden and heavy-handed. I love a good feminist horror movie - the original Slumber Party Massacre, for example - and I love horror comedies, but dialogue about "how dare the men have the privilege to be murdered first" or "I'd stay but my toxic masculinity makes me have to go" are just... meh. The jokes are lowest-common-denominator and bring the fun to a screeching halt. You want to make a movie that's actually about feminism, take the time wasted by these kind of jokes and put it towards developing the female characters so that the main protagonist doesn't have to explain her motivation in a speech to the villain at the end instead of letting it out in conversations and actions throughout the movie.

And it takes away from a genuinely fun plot with a lot of great moments between women, which is really a shame. The first and last 30 minutes of the movie are great. It's what goes on in-between that's inconsistent. The movie-makers should have had more faith in the rest of this movie, because that 10% of crappy dialogue cost about two stars in my enjoyment.

If you're looking for a werewolf slash-em-up, this isn't the film for you. It's an introspective psychodrama with a main character who may be hallucinating violent episodes or might be a werewolf, and we all know ahead of time which side we want that to come down on. The plot is interesting not because you can't tell where it will go, but because it is interesting to watch the character grow and change from beginning to end, along with her music.

I'm not sure why so many folks had a problem with this movie - my gut suspicion is that a lot of the male viewers really weren't the audience for a slow-burn werewolf film with a female main character with Lorde-esque piano-pop vocals. I think this will go over better with a lot of female viewers and people who are okay with horror being subtle and creeping.

The penultimate episode set up an amazing premise of wholesale slaughter at a rock concert... the thing the whole season was building towards. Having the denouement of the plot told in flashbacks with none of the promise fulfilled, not even one rock band slaughtered, made me very disappointed. While it was interesting as a happy-ish ending, the setup had so much undelivered promise that it just completely failed to deliver.

I feel like the writing on Walker is getting better with every episode. The characters are really coming to life and earlier episodes' story lines are coming back in new complications and ways. It was nice seeing Micki react negatively to the storm - so often, "strong" female characters aren't allowed to have weaknesses. We've seen Cordell being imperfect multiple times. It's good to see Micki have her own moments. All of the actors were at their best this episode, really. Mitch Pileggi and Molly Hagen put so much nuance into every small interaction, and all of the younger actors put out some of their strongest performances yet.

That said, this episode illustrates some of my continuing issues with the show, and I'd like to know how many of them are due to limitations of the pandemic and how many are ones that they need to bring in consultants to fix.

Some of the tornado scenes were good - others read fake, even if you don't live in the area. In some scenes, their hair is whipping around, in others it's barely moving. And it's a little too obvious that they're shooting on a sound stage, which I know is due to the pandemic, but I look forward to the time when they can have slightly better effects.

Similarly, some of the police procedural aspects are better and more believable. Others still feel like they're hand-waving away anything regulations that would get in the way of the story they want to tell. It would be really nice to see the show get an expert in these things in to advise the scripts.

A lot of these issues may be limitations imposed by the pandemic. I'm sure they can only have so many people on set, and only film in so many locations. I look forward to seeing what they are capable of when the pandemic scenes are over. Perhaps during the upcoming hiatus they can strengthen some of the show's weaker areas.

For most of this movie, I was sufficiently entertained to keep watching. The actor who plays the devil is fun to watch, and the setting and demons are very Silent Hill in a good way. You'll never be surprised by what happens next, but it's not terrible. I would have given it five stars, except for two plot elements that just needed to not be there.

Making the black man a man who rapes and kills white women is a stereotype that needed to stop being used a century ago. I nearly stopped the film here, but it was 4:30 am and I figured, what the heck, let's see how deep this rabbit hole goes. THEN the movie redeemed the racist and let him live because he repented for having accidentally killed his daughter because she was dating a black man - but not for framing her lover for her death. Eff that.

And then, ten minutes from the end, the movie turns into pro-life propaganda. The woman is going to hell for getting an abortion, and she's only forgiven because the girl in the hospital she's been trying to protect is her unborn baby and her unborn baby knows that she was always loved.

I repeat, eff that.

What a waste of some acting talent and truly awesome demon effects.

High points of this film: lots of kills that don't shy away from the gore, a nice creepy slasher mask, and good acting from the cast. The creators are clearly fans of the slasher genre, and it shows.

Low points: The writing and wasted acting potential. So much of this plot is just annoyingly slapdash. They're ostensibly there for a music festival, but it's clear there was never anything like that slated to happen. So what happened? Was it someone's deception to get bait or are they so off-track they accidentally went to the right murder house instead of the wrong one? Why didn't the hunter warn off the girls when they arrived? Why didn't we get to see the scene where their friends wandered off or otherwise got captured? Where does an entire junkyard of cars come from on the secluded mountainside?

Moreover, the chemistry between the actresses who live the longest was an interesting combination of antagonism turned reluctant friendship. The movie shouldn't have been so quick to separate them and end it. Watching them fight together would have made for a more interesting film and changed the pacing from just kill-chase-kill.

There's potential here for a better movie than they gave us. I'd like to see this team try again with a stronger script.

Is this the Russian Blair Witch? Yeah, kinda. Does that make it bad? No. It's not the most original plot, but it's well-made and I enjoyed it. After the first half hour, the film switches out of found-footage mode, which makes it a lot easier to follow along and see what's happening. That said, if you're looking forward to a full found-footage film, it can be disjointing when the change in perspective happens. The horror itself is slow to start - definitely a long-burn - but once the ramp-up finally begins, the pacing is good, the suspense is palpable, and the atmosphere is creepy. And unlike The Blair Witch, you get to see a lot more of what is happening to the characters. But pay attention - a lot of stuff happens in the background, or not where the camera is focusing on it. Figures appear and disappear in the shadows, feet wait but disappear just in time to realize the person you think they belong to is on the other side of the car... on the first viewing, I didn't notice that the viewers see the fate of the missing boy - the camera goes right across his face at one point in the tunnel, but it's easy to miss if you aren't expecting it. At another point, you can see the witch's legs and feet in shadow on a wall, cast impossibly from a light source with nothing in front of it to cast the shadow!

The dubbing is acceptable and the dubbed acting is fine - in the beginning interviews, the voices sometimes seem too young for the characters, but the dubbed voices for the main cast are good. I suspect it would still be better in the original with subtitles.

(One note: The producer of this film, Svyatoslav Podgaevskiy, is the director of another Russian horror movie that came out recently, Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest. Moreover, the films share a writer in common. Since Baba Yaga is also a legendary witch in the woods... make sure you know which movie you're intending to watch before you start!)