Miracle cures. More like curse! I refuse to tell you how long it took me to come up with that. A strange baptism of a young girl that doesn’t seem to be the doctrine of any benevolent religion ends with spookiness upon the utterance of a name. That name being Larue. The baptism is kind of a work around for the unbaptized dead as they use a person as a proxy. It’s… creepy and awful. Ten years later we join an artist working on a new piece. She’s carrying some obvious trauma that stems back to her past association with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). Her boyfriend comes home to her digging holes with her hands in the yard but she has no memory of this. Her psychiatrist (who has treated several former members of the FLDS) is concerned that the episodes are becoming more violent and going on longer. To avoid institutionalization, he advises she confront whatever past she is suppressing and even recommends that they contact some healers from the church. Her boyfriend Adam thinks this is a horrible plan but Elise really does not want to go to the “nut house”. She, Adam and her “new age” friend Gwen head out to the old FLDS land to confront Elise’s past by putting her right into the viper’s den… with their support as hopeful anchor to whatever choppy waters she’ll be diving into. The “treatment” involves a psychedelic trip and even though this procedure is no longer practiced, a young man insists on doing it as he blames himself for Elise’s leaving. He’s creepy, has a crus on Elise and is named Hyrum which is just a doomed mix. Memories begin to flood in that expose a few secrets (a sexual relationship with the bishop’s daughter and dabbling in the worship of something dark), a locked cellar on the property hides something terrible and there’s a malicious presence hanging around in the shadows. A hallucinatory trip goes wrong and something gets pulled out of Elise but the catch is evil is birthed back into the world and it ain’t done with our hero. Dead animals left on display freak everyone out. A dead car gets them stalled. Curiosity has Elise really wanting to uncover what happened to the woman she was close with. Hyrum confesses his mother witnessed a spirit latched on to Elise and warns the trio that it’s free now to do as it pleases. The supernatural threat is wonderfully realized in its horrific appearance and given a nasty backstory to boot. The cast is solid across the board (kind of losing it when things slip into mania) and given enough depth to leave an impression even if some revelations feel more like convenience than development. The slow progression works in the favor of unsettling supernatural shenanigans but it’s still familiar ground that youthful victims have been treading on for decades. It surprisingly stumbles into supernatural slasher territory in the last act and I’m fine with things going off the rails and getting stupid.
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