Howard’s Mill (2021) (USA)

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On an 80-acre patch of abandoned farmland in the rural township of Springfield, TN, Emily Dixon went missing while she and her husband Dwight were partaking in some amateur treasure hunting. The police like Dwight as a suspect but even with suspicion falling on him, he continues to search for his missing wife. This draws the attention of two film students from Nashville who come along to speak with Dwight. After getting through the basics, Dwight lets them know that Emily isn’t the only person to disappear on that property and the police aren’t exactly forthcoming with that interesting bit of information. There’s a disturbingly long line of unsolved disappearances stretching all the way back to the founding of the small town in 1798 and the area where Emily vanished has a local bit of infamy, the kind of place where kids dare each other to go and older folks don’t like to talk about. A missing girl, who pretty much vanished off the face of the earth right in front of her parents, is the first case looked at. Her father may have lost his mind following the disappearance and believes something beyond our realm of understanding went down. A video Emily took before the occurrence shows a reclusive and eccentric neighbor creeping around in the background, a neighbor that attempted to kidnap a 14-year-old girl some years back. When confronted, he claims that “the land took her” and let’s out another name. In 1977 a family of migrant workers all vanished, leaving only their son Daniel. The filmmakers and Dwight eventually break into the abandoned house on the property and things take an unexpected turn. The deeper they dig, the more disturbing things get. Interviews, cellphone video and security camera footage piece together the story as things gradually spiral into unfathomable depths. A nice mix of David Paulides’ intriguing Missing 411 series, the Skinwalker Ranch bizarreness and every “true crime” documentary that gained in popularity after Netflix unleashed Tiger King on our unfortunate asses. It lags in a few spots, has a couple awkward sequences/performances and offers up a completely unnecessary final scene but it still works.