Demon and Dink robbed a check cashing place and it went bad. This led to kidnapping and a car wreck. Demon woke up in an unfamiliar place. “This shit crazy.” Demon assures us. All of this action is narrated to us as some dude in a very cheap black goalie mask slowly walks towards the camera on a pleasant bridge. Yes, Demon. This shit is indeed “crazy”. Credits play over some lovely nature footage and then we join Demon shouting as he holds his eye and wanders down a culvert. Judging by his orange hoodie, I believe our man Demon is the hockey-masked power walker from the opening. As someone else who can’t shut up that pretentious voice in their head, I completely sympathize with narrating your own bridge stroll. Demon is trying to figure out where Dink is and also get an idea of where the hell he has ended up. The “action” music hits as he washes his face with stream water. Can this shit get any crazier? Dink’s body is found along with the loot, Demon also comes across a cave and repeatedly asks if anyone is in there. Receiving no answer, he climbs in and lights a conveniently available torch. Sure. He then drinks some liquid out of a thermos also just laying in the cave. To the surprise of nobody, this makes him violently ill. Me thinks Dink was a far more suitable name for Demon. His illness ends and he throws on that black goalie mask and leaves the cave as catchy rap music plays on the soundtrack. “We gonna grind till we shine!” Masked Demon roams around the woods and takes in his environment. He also removes his hoodie and gets himself an axe. We then join a dude in a Dodgers jersey on the phone explaining the narrative as he excitedly talks about the family getting together for a reunion camping trip. This family is comprised of mostly middle aged folks with a few of them being just as excited about a camping trip in their forties as I would be. Drinking and nature footage caught with a somewhat cheaper camera follows. We’re also blessed with familiar music cues, lazy slasher shenanigans visited upon random nobodies (the axe vanishes and is replaced with a machete) and people talking over each other when they’re not just mumbling at the same volume. This may sound like I’m complaining but this is the right kind of backyard filmmaking that charms the hell out of me… until it doesn’t. The huge camping party finally enters the woods (a wanted sign for Demon lets us know it’s the same woods) and continues yelling at each other and complaining about camping. They have also taken no time to introduce any of these people as singular humans, so it’s just like a large grouping of cannon fodder. There’s one guy who has plenty of grays in his beard and definitely did not want to go camping so he’s the one I sympathize with. The fifty thousand dollar reward for Demon is tempting for almost everyone (my hero just wants to relax) and they discuss this (yell) as overly dramatic music plays and Demon stalks around the background and footage of a python crossing a road plays. A cop shows up to a “shots fired” call (he’s rocking a sweater, a Yankees hat and a badge) and gets immediately murdered. Demon shows himself to the gaggle of campers, gets shot and beaten (hilarious sound effects here) and shrugs it off. This makes the campers retreat… with all the urgency of filing paperwork due in four months. Around 60% of the family vanish, the rest end up in the culvert and more convenient torches are discovered. More wandering and loud mumbling happens. All focused on people who I’m not sure were ever given names. They go in the cave. They leave the cave. People die at random and I think the only character I was loosely invested in just disappeared. We jump to Jackson, MS after timelapse footage of a plane being prepped for takeoff… no, I did not have a stroke. This movie is having one. A couple of other family members visit a voodoo priestess to help their family members stuck in the woods (adjacent to the suburbs and a busy highway) in dealing with Demon. She struggles to deliver exposition and a direction for our heroes to take. I think it’s a spirit named Ling Ling that can help them… although I also believe that becomes inconsequential to anything. The camping family gets a message from (maybe) the voodoo priestess with automated voice directions on what to do and what they’re dealing with. Demon is possessed by the medicine man Geronimo (I know, what the fuck?) and it’s up to our surviving family members to put an end to the terror. Also, my grumpy hero returns to complain about things. A basement slasher with delusions of grandeur could make for a fun time and there are pieces of this film I was completely enamored with (homemade slasher action, lunatic plot points, ornery middle-agers, odd music choices, pathetic violence, accidental crew cameos) but it’s sunk by an ambling attitude, almost no focus and a seeming refusal to cut anything out. Nobody needs to watch this much walking and arguing. Nobody. Shit is crazy but the sad kind of crazy that cruelly takes beloved family members away from you.
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